Todd and Julie Chrisley pushed back on claims by their child Chloe’s biological mom Angela Johnson that she wants to get custody of her daughter back in a statement to People on Wednesday, December 7. The pair, who were recently sentenced to prison for tax fraud, admitted that they were “saddened” by the claims that Angela has made surrounding the 10-year-old.
Todd and Julie, as well as their lawyer Jessica Doyle, released statements responding to Angela’s claims that she’s been trying to take back custody of her daughter. “Todd and Julie are saddened by the unfortunate and misleading narrative currently being portrayed in the media regarding Chloe,” the couple said in a statement.
Angela had Chloe with Todd’s son Kyle back in 2012, but she lost custody in 2016. The child’s birth mom said she was “in the process of getting some legal papers filed so I can go back to court to get Chloe back home,” as she told TMZ. She also claimed that since they both reside in different states, she as unsure which state they would need to file their paperwork in.
Despite Angela’s claims, the family’s lawyer Jessica explained that because the Chrisleys adopted Chloe, they were her parents. “Todd and Julie Chrisley don’t just have custody of Chloe. They are her legal parents through adoption,” she told People. “I have reviewed the public statements made by Angela Johnson. They are simply not legally correct or even valid.”
Jessica also gave some background on how she knows that the Chrisleys are still Chloe’s legal parents. “I handled the formal adoption of Chloe by Todd and Julie Chrisley. Angela Johnson’s parental rights were terminated when she voluntarily surrendered her parental rights to Todd and Julie Chrisley on March 24, 2017,” the family law attorney said. “She has had no contact with the minor child since 2015.”
Since Todd and Julie were sentenced to 12 and 7 years, respectively, in prison for fraud, their daughter Savannah has revealed that she would have custody of Chloe in an episode of her Unlocked podcast. Julie and Savannah spoke about how Chloe was taking her grandparents’ prison sentence in another episode of the podcast, where they revealed that she often listened to what was going on, and they said that she was getting help from therapists.