Family

At a Wall Street Journal event on December 6, 2021, Musk said: "There are not enough people," and: "If people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words." Asked whether that was why he had so many children, he said: "I try to set a good example. Gotta practice what I preach." In July 2022 he wrote: "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far." The United Nations projected in 2024 that "the world's population will peak in the mid-2080s, growing over the next sixty years from 8.2 billion people in 2024 to around 10.3 billion." The same report says: "Globally, women are having one child fewer, on average, than they did around 1990."

News organizations count 14 children of Musk's who are publicly known, with four women. Teen Vogue wrote in March 2025: "It is publicly known that Musk has as many as 14 children with 4 different mothers across a 20-year span." One of the 14, his first child, died as an infant in 2002. When a birth was reported in June 2024, Musk said: "All our friends and family know. Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean 'secret.'"

Musk married the writer Justine Wilson in 2000 and filed for divorce in 2008. Each published an account in 2010. He wrote: "Given the choice, I'd rather stick a fork in my hand than write about my personal life." He wrote that he filed for divorce before he met his next wife, that "Custody of our five children is split evenly," and that the legal bills "total four million dollars so far." She wrote in Marie Claire that at their wedding he told her: "I am the alpha in this relationship." She wrote that two months after the wedding she signed an agreement under which, she later understood, "I had effectively signed away all my rights as a married person." Both described the same court ruling. He wrote: "On May 3rd this year, the California court agreed with my position, declaring the marital agreement both valid and enforceable." She also wrote: "I will always respect the brilliant and visionary person that he is."

Musk married the actress Talulah Riley in 2010. He announced their divorce in January 2012 in a message to her on Twitter: "It was an amazing four years." They remarried in July 2013. He filed for divorce at the end of 2014 and withdrew the petition seven months later. She filed in March 2016, and the AP described the divorce as amicable. They had no children together. Riley said in 2022: "He's a great friend. He looks out for me."

In April 2022, the day after she turned 18, Vivian Wilson asked a Los Angeles court to change her name and legal gender. She gave her reason in the petition: "Gender Identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form." A judge granted it on June 22, 2022, after no one objected. Two years later she told NBC News that she stood by what she wrote.

In an interview streamed on X on July 22, 2024, Musk said of her: "I lost my son, essentially," and that she was "dead, killed by the woke mind virus." Of the consent forms for her medical treatment as a minor, he said: "I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys." He added: "I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we're making some progress." Three days later Wilson answered in an interview with NBC News: "He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects." Of his description of her childhood, she wrote: "He doesn't know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn't there." She said: "I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child." Musk did not respond to NBC's request for comment.

In April 2022 Musk and Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neuralink, asked a Texas court to change the names of twins so that they would "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name." A judge signed the order on May 11, 2022. The petition made the births publicly known when it was reported that July. The same day Musk wrote: "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis." When a third child was reported in June 2024, he said the birth had not been secret.

Musk sued the musician Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, in Texas in September 2023 over custody of their three children. That month she filed her own petition in California. The Texas case was sealed, and the court clerk confirmed that a judge issued a final order in August 2024. "It's unclear how the lawsuit was resolved," Business Insider reported. Neither side commented. In November 2024 Boucher wrote that she had "spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights," and that during it "I didn't see one of my babies for 5 months."

On February 14, 2025, Ashley St. Clair, a writer, said publicly: "Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father." A week later she filed petitions in New York asking a court to declare paternity and give her sole custody. On March 31 Musk wrote: "I don't know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out. No court order is needed. Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year." She answered: "Elon, we asked you to confirm paternity through a test before our child (who you named) was even born. You refused." Her lawyer said he had "reduced his financial support substantially and unilaterally." Global News reported in April that "Musk was confirmed as the father of the child on Friday following a court-ordered test." A judge sealed the proceedings on May 29, 2025.

Status: No ruling on paternity, custody or support was found as of November 15, 2026.

On January 12, 2026, Musk wrote that he "will be filing for full custody today," saying statements by St. Clair implied she might transition the child. The day before, asked whether her views on transgender people had changed, she had written: "I feel immense guilt for my role. And even more guilt that things I have said in the past may have caused my son's sister more pain." The New York Daily News reported: "St. Clair has made no public declaration of an intention to transition her child."

Status: No report was found that he filed, and no ruling was found. The New York case is sealed.

On December 5, 2024, Musk went into a private meeting with members of Congress about the Department of Government Efficiency "with his young son on his shoulders," the AP reported. On February 11, 2025, he "stood next to the Resolute Desk with his young son" in the Oval Office while he took reporters' questions about his government work. The boy's mother, Claire Boucher, wrote that day: "He should not be in public like this. I did not see this, thank u for alerting me. But I'm glad he was polite."

Musk told Rolling Stone in 2017 of his father: "He was such a terrible human being." He said: "My dad was not physically violent with me. He was only physically violent when I was very young." He said he had chosen as a boy to live with his father after his parents separated: "I felt sorry for my father, because my mother had all three kids." The magazine reported that as an adult he moved his father to California, and then "severed the relationship." Errol Musk replied to the magazine by email that he had only "smacked" his son once, and wrote: "I love my children and would readily do whatever for them."