Jay-Z seeks to block bankruptcy from wiping out six-figure judgment won in yearslong paternity lawsuit

Jay-Z is asking a court to prevent a $119,000 judgment from being wiped out in the bankruptcy of Lillie Coley, grandmother of a man claiming to be his son.

Jay-Z is taking legal steps to make sure a six-figure judgment in his favor survives a bankruptcy filing, according to court documents obtained by TMZ.

The rapper has entered the ongoing bankruptcy case of Lillie Coley, asking the court to rule that the roughly $119,000 she was ordered to pay him cannot be discharged along with her other debts. His argument turns on how the judgment came about in the first place: the money was awarded, his filing states, because of “fraudulent statements and misrepresentations designed to harass and target” him, a category of debt that bankruptcy protections do not typically wipe away.

TMZ reported that Jay-Z’s attorney characterized the past decade as a sustained campaign, pointing to what the filing describes as numerous unfounded court filings, online harassment efforts and public statements directed at the musician.

The dispute traces back to Rymir Satterthwaite, Coley’s grandson, who has spent years asserting that Jay-Z is his biological father. Satterthwaite has said his late mother, Wanda, had a relationship with the rapper that resulted in his birth. Jay-Z has contested those claims in court, and per TMZ, every lawsuit Coley has brought against him has been dismissed.

In his filing, the rapper says he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees defending against the pair, framing the accumulated costs as evidence of why the judgment matters beyond its dollar figure. His position is that a discharge would effectively reward conduct a judge already found sanctionable.

Coley has pushed back, asking the court to toss Jay-Z’s petition on procedural grounds, arguing he failed to satisfy various requirements tied to the filing. TMZ noted that the matter remains unresolved, with the case still active.

The proceeding represents the latest chapter in a legal saga that has stretched across more than a decade, one that has consistently ended in Jay-Z’s favor in court but has proved difficult to bring to a definitive close. For now, the question before the bankruptcy court is narrow: whether a judgment rooted in findings of misrepresentation can simply be erased.