Kate Gosselin is speaking out about her 2009 divorce from Jon Gosselin.
The 50-year-old former reality star, who appeared on Jon & Kate Plus 8 with her ex-husband, answered a viewer’s question about how to navigate a divorce during a TikTok Live Wednesday.
“I don’t know if you have kids or don’t have kids, but I just, I made decisions based on how I would want to be treated, honestly,” she said, as reported by People. “And I didn’t buy into all the drama and the hate, and the ugly. And I had kids involved, so I wanted it to be as peaceful for them as I possibly could.
“I did not hire an attorney that wanted to stir up trouble; I just wanted it to be peaceful, and I wanted the best for my kids,” she continued. “A lot of things happened that I could not control that did not turn out well for my kids, but I did my best. We just got through it to the best of our ability.”
However, she did claim that her and Jon’s divorce “could’ve been a lot calmer and a lot nicer if everybody was willing to play nice.”
The Independent has contacted a representative for Jon Gosselin for comment.
From 2007 to 2009, Kate and Jon starred in their hit TLC reality show about the former couple’s now-21-year-old sextuplets, Hannah, Leah, Alexis, Joel, Aaden, and Collin, and their now-24-year-old twins, Madelyn and Cara.
The series was later renamed to Kate Plus 8, featuring Kate navigating life as a single parent, and ran from 2010 to 2017. However, Jon often made appearances in the program.
Although Kate was awarded custody of their eight children after the divorce, Jon was later given custody of her estranged son Collin — who spent two years in a behavioral health institution after his mom sent him there — and Hannah.
Kate’s divorce comments came days after she responded to Collin’s claim that he and his siblings were “forced apart” and “pitted against each other.”
“He knows why…” she wrote in the comments of a TikTok video after a fan shared a screenshot of Collin’s post.
Collin claimed in his initial TikTok, shared earlier this month, that he and his siblings were “born to be a team.” However, he then said, alongside a throwback picture of the eight kids, that they were “forced to” go through life alone and “wonder what [their] lives could have looked like.”
“Forced apart, pitted against each other,” he added in the caption. “All the fame and money in the world, but what about kids being kids? I will always love them more than anything. The tears I shed behind closed doors, thinking about the memories we could’ve shared.”
Collin has been estranged from his mother for several years and has publicly accused her of emotional and physical abuse during his childhood. Kate has continued to deny those allegations.
In an interview with The Sun last year, Collin claimed he was confined and “isolated” from his other seven siblings by Kate and that he was “a scapegoat” for his mother’s problems and often took “the brute end of things.”
Kate’s attorney, Richard Puleo, told The Sun that he didn’t believe that Kate had done anything to “intentionally harm” her son and that “she did what she did to protect herself and her family” from what he called “troubled behavior.”
