Grimes challenges Elon Musk for parental rights in court

Elon Musk and Grimes had an intermittent relationship between 2018 and 2021

Singer Grimes has filed a legal petition over parental rights of the three children she shares with Elon Musk.

Court records show that Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, filed a petition "to establish parental relationship" on 29 September.

Grimes, 35, previously accused Mr Musk of blocking access to one of her sons in a now-deleted social media post.

The 52-year-old Mr Musk has at least 11 children with three different women.

The details of the petition, filed to the Superior Court of San Francisco, are not publicly available.

Neither Grimes nor Mr Musk could be reached for comment on the legal filing.

Grimes and Musk have three children: X Æ A-1, known as X, who was born in May 2020, and a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl - known as Y - who was born by surrogacy in December 2021.

A third child, a boy named Techno Mechanicus, or Tau, was born in June last year and whose birth was recently revealed in a biography of Mr Musk written by journalist Walter Isaacson.

In a since-deleted post last month, Grimes - with whom Mr Musk had an intermittent relationship from 2018 to 2021 - wrote that he "should let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer".

The post was reportedly in response to an image posted by Mr Isaacson of twins that Mr Musk fathered with tech executive Shivon Zilis.

"I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart," Grimes wrote in the 7 September post, a screenshot of which was shared by the website Jezebel.

In a subsequent post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on 10 September, Grimes apologised for the post and said she hopes to keep "my babies out of the public eye".

In total, Mr Musk has had at least 11 children, including six with his ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Musk.

He was also twice married to Westworld actress Talulah Riley. The pair were first married in 2010 but divorced in 2012, but reconciled a year later before divorcing in 2016.

The controversial tech mogul is also the target of two other recent lawsuits.

On 2 October, a California man sued Mr Musk over claims he was harassed because of a false post - amplified by Musk - that put him at the scene of a far-right protest in Oregon in June. In one post cited by the lawsuit, Mr Musk referred to the confrontation as a ""probably false flag situation".

An unrelated lawsuit filed in Florida the same day came from X Social Media, a company which accuses Mr Musk of trademark infringement for the new name of Twitter.