Kobe Bryant's Legacy Left Behind Some Major Mama Drama

Since Kobe Bryant passed earlier this year, it hasn’t been easy for anyone, but especially the Bryant family. Vanessa Bryant and her mom, Sofia Laine, have been through the ringer with their fair share of drama. The new drama, however, is that Vanessa Bryant’s mom has now filed a lawsuit against her own daughter, seeking financial assets.

Vanessa’s mom has made several claims against her daughter and the Bryant family, and is now suing for payment for nannying the Bryant children. Not only that, but she has insisted that she was kicked off the family property after Kobe’s death, and that Kobe had promised to take care of Sofia indefinitely. However, there’s really no way of knowing which story is true.

According to USA Today, Sofia has filed a lawsuit to get money from Vanessa Bryant, claiming she was “unpaid as a ‘longtime personal assistant and nanny.’” Vanessa, on the other hand, is claiming this is extortion and that she has been a stay-at-home mother to her children; she shared that her mom watches her kids as much as any other grandparent. 

Not only that, but the lawsuit is very specific. Vanessa Bryant revealed that her mom is only contacting her through intermediaries, not even speaking with her own daughter. She has been demanding $5 million, a house, and a Mercedes SUV … which is quite the big ask for her supposed losses of taking care of her grandchildren. It’s hard to see Sofia’s side of the story when it really does seem like extortion from a mourning mother and widow.

When asked if it was true that Vanessa’s mom had been nannying her children with, according to Sofia, no meal and rest breaks over 12 hour days, Vanessa adamantly denied this. Vanessa posted to Instagram, "I have always been a stay-at-home mother and my husband and I were our daughters' full-time caregivers … For nearly two decades, we arranged for my mother to live in our nearby properties, at no cost to her because she had claimed that she didn't have any money to buy her own home after her divorce."

Based on the past, in which the Bryants truly did support Vanessa’s mother by giving her a nearby home and taking care of her financially, it seems unlikely that they’d have to owe anything else. However, it does seem like there’s a lot of bitterness between the mother and daughter duo. 

Vanessa claims that Sofia “has no regard for how this is affecting [her] children and [herself],” and that her mom “wants to live off of [her] daughters and [her] for the rest of her life while continuing to collect monthly alimony from her ex-husband since 2004."

Right after Kobe died, Vanessa’s mom spoke out to news outlets, sharing that Vanessa went to social events too soon after her husband’s death, leaving her mom at home with her kids. Sofia’s claim is that “Vanessa was agitated by the advice [Sofia] gave her. In relation, Vanessa Bryant embarked on a mission to cut [Sofia] off physically and financially.''

It does seem plausible that it would be challenging for Vanessa’s mom to fake the financial separation from her daughter; her claims include that she was kicked off their property and cut off financially, including from health insurance. While this may be the case, typically a child has no responsibility to legally support their parent, so this legal mama drama could go any which way.