'Teen Mom' Star Jenelle Evans Sends Son Jace to Live With His Estranged Father

Having a troubled child is one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking things a mom can experience. Fans of Teen Mom 2 star Jenelle Evans has been dealing with this with her eldest son Jace for years. Their relationship has not been smooth sailing, and things have recently escalated to a significantly more worrying state.

In response to these escalating challenges, Jenelle made a shocking move and sent Jace to live with his estranged father in Florida. Here's what we know about the surprising decision.

For most of Jace's young life, he was in the care of Jenelle's mom, Barbara Evans. Jenelle was navigating raising children as a teenager and multiple unstable romantic relationships.

Yet in March 2023, Jenelle gained custody of Jace. She brought him home to live with her full time, along with his half-siblings Kaiser and Ensley. Unfortunately, by that time he was a troubled teenager, and a few months later he began running away.

Things seemed to come to a crescendo in April 2025 after Jenelle called the police on Jace, claiming that he was "smashing everything in the house" per a recording obtained by The Ashley's Reality Roundup. It was the second time in six months.

These incidents followed multiple run-ins with Jenelle's estranged husband, David Eason. In at least one, David was accused of strangling Jace, per the outlet. However, Jenelle and David later told The Ashley that the claim about David assaulting Jace was false.

Nonetheless, something led to a breakdown between Jenelle and Jace, and in May 2025, she loaded him on a plate to send him to Florida to live with his father, Andrew Lewis, according to TheSun. It's unclear how long Jace will be staying with his dad.

However, the outlet reported that an insider told them, "Jenelle put Jace on a plane on Friday and he has been with Andrew since. It's the summertime, and as of now, it's a temporary situation, so Jace doesn't need to be enrolled in school at the moment."

The insider added, "The timing worked out that he doesn't have to start a new school immediately. But Andrew has begun the process of looking into where Jace may possibly enroll."

This makes it sound like it might be a long-term situation for the 16-year-old.

Unfortunately for Jace, this is far from the first time that he's been tangled up in troubles with his mom. For most of his childhood, Jenelle seemed self-aware enough to realize that she was too immature to provide him with the stability he needed.

Unfortunately, that instability seems to have found him anyway.

While Jenelle's younger children, Ensley and Kaiser, don't seem to have the same level of trouble that Jace does, the situation can't help but impact them in some way.

According to TheSun, an insider insisted that the move to send Jace to Florida may have been as much about keeping things calm for his younger half-siblings as it was to send him somewhere new to try to offer him some stabilization.

The second insider told the outlet, "Jenelle has done the best that she could since she left David [her ex-husband]. She's been asking for help with things happening with Jace and she has done what she could to walk through them."

At least for now, they report, Jace will be returning to Jenelle in mid-June to assess things. What happens from there remains to be seen.