A Look Back At Cher's Messy Custody Battle With Her Ex Sonny Bono

On the surface, Cher and Sonny Bono had a perfect romance, until it all came crashing down. They were a hit couple who made massively popular music, co-starred on a successful variety show and shared a child. Their relationship began under questionable circumstances, when a 16-year-old Cher began dating the 27-year-old Sonny while claiming she was 18. But their whirlwind romance and powerhouse musical talent won over America. 

Behind the scenes, however, things were much darker and more tragic for Cher. According to the music icon, Sonny became controlling and exercised that control through their finances. Cher felt trapped and, after considering suicide, in 1974 decided to end things with Sonny instead. She hoped to find a way to co-parent their child, but Sonny had no intention of making things easy for her, and the pair entered into a contentious divorce and ever-more-vicious custody battle. Even now, nearly five decades later, it's clear from Cher's interviews and her recent book, "Cher: The Memoir: Part One," that their acrimonious divorce — and her feelings surrounding it — still occupies a great deal of space in her mind and memories.

After a decade of marriage, and several rocky years, things fell apart for Sonny and Cher in 1974. Sonny filed for legal separation, and Cher responded the next week by filing for divorce. In her filing, Cher cited "involuntary servitude" as the grounds for divorce, and claimed that Sonny had been trying to control her financially during their marriage. In fact, Cher earned nearly no money from their work as a music duo. Sonny had set up Cher Enterprises, a company he owned that controlled the money earned from their musical endeavors. Cher was technically an employee of Cher Enterprises, under contract to her own husband.

"He was like the father. You know how you can be frightened of your father even if he doesn't ever do anything? ... He never hit me, never really yelled at me. He could be tough, though," Cher recalled during an appearance on the "Blank on Blank" podcast in 2016. "I went to him and said, 'Look, break the contract. Let us drop a new contract, make it 50-50. You can't tell me what to do anymore. I'm 27 years old. ... And he wouldn't do it, and he just didn't count on how tough I could be."

Cher's divorce from Sonny was anything but civilized, as the two battled it out over money and over custody of their child, born in 1969, who has since transitioned and is now called Chaz Bono. In "Cher: The Memoir," the songstress recalled how Sonny attempted to paint her as an unfit mother to the court during their legal row, specifically because of Cher's penchant for bringing the child to the Playboy Mansion, and her friendship with Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner.

According to Cher, Hefner had given the child a huge plush lion toy as a birthday present, and welcomed him to the mansion many times, allowing him to see his pet monkeys and swim in the pool. That led to Sonny using the visits as ammo in their custody battle. "I was shattered when my husband Sonny changed tack in our divorce proceedings by applying for full custody ... and accusing me of being an unfit mother," Cher wrote (via Radar). "I never would have taken [him] there if something inappropriate was going on and the thought of losing custody ... filled me with anxiety."

Sonny Bono's efforts to best Cher during their divorce and gain full custody over their child didn't go the way he'd hoped. Despite Sonny's argument that Cher's trips to the Playboy Mansion made her a bad mom, after listening to both parties in May 1974, the presiding judge ruled in Cher's favor.

In fact, the judge actually reduced Sonny's custody rights, shortening his visitation time, which was not something Cher had even requested. Cher wrote that Sonny was stunned by the decision, and recalled telling him that she wouldn't be vindictive. 

"Shocked, Sonny asked me, 'Are you really going to stick to that?' To which I replied, 'Of course not, dummy. You can see her whenever you like,'" Cher wrote in her memoir. "The last thing I was going to do was keep our child from seeing [his] best friend."

During their troubled marriage, Cher felt the crushing weight of Sonny Bono's influence over her, and had a difficult time reconciling who she was with who he wanted her to be, and the duo had what Cher later admitted was an unusual marriage. According to the Goddess of Pop, Sonny had another woman living with him in their home while he and Cher were still married, and as she said during an interview in the "Blank on Blank" podcast, she was okay with that.

"We had a strange relationship. I don't expect anybody to understand it, because it was our relationship and it worked for us," Cher said. "I can't explain it, because it was weird. ... But I know what it was, and it was what it was."

Cher, meanwhile, sparked a romance with record producer David Geffen amid her contentious divorce proceedings. The pair made their red-carpet debut at the Grammys in 1974, and Geffen helped the songstress free herself from Sonny's draconian business contract and financial entanglements. The pair dated for two years. In a biography of Geffen, "The Operator," Cher said (via The Hollywood Reporter), "I was the first person to share his bed and to share his life. ... We were really crazy about each other."

After a lengthy divorce battle and subsequent settlement over royalties, Cher and Sonny Bono came to an agreement in 1978 that royalties and revenue generated by their music would be divided equally between them in the future. This worked well for the pair until Sonny's death in a skiing accident in 1998, at age 62, at which point his controlling interest in the royalties was passed to his wife, Mary Bono.

Then, in 2016, nearly 40 years after Sonny and Cher's high-profile fight over money had ended, Mary stirred things up yet again by citing a specific aspect of copyright law that allows artists and their heirs to attempt and win back rights that they may have previously signed away or lost. In 2021, Cher didn't get her cut of the royalties owed to her, so the pop icon sued and initiated another long legal battle that has not been settled.

In May 2024, a judge ruled in Cher's favor, awarding her $418,000 in royalties that had been withheld since 2021. However, in November, Mary's lawyers filed a new argument with the court that Cher had no right to collect those royalties after Cher sold the rights to her music catalogue to Iconic Artists Group in July 2022. It seems that, even after divorce and death, Cher is destined to be inexorably locked in battle with her former flame.