Courtesy of Paul Staehle/Instagram
90 Day Fiance’s Paul and Karine Staehle Are Parents to 2 Growing Boys: Meet Their Sons Pierre and Ethan
90 Day Fiancé alums Paul Staehle and his estranged wife, Karine Staehle, have two young children, Pierre and Ethan, but neither currently have custody of their sons.
Both Pierre, 4, and Ethan, 2, were taken into custody by Child Protective Services and placed into foster care in June 2022. The removal of Pierre and Ethan from the Staehles’ care came after a video of Paul and Karine having a verbal altercation in their Kentucky home surfaced on the internet.
Paul and Karine are currently facing a custody battle for their sons, after which they hope to coparent the children. Keep reading to learn everything we know about the former couple’s kids.
Pierre Staehle
Paul and Karine first shared the news that Karine was pregnant during the 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days season 2 tell-all episode, shortly after their previous experience with miscarriage aired on the TLC show.
The couple welcomed their first child together, a baby boy named Pierre Martins Staehle, on March 22, 2019, at 3:20 p.m., according to TLC. The baby, who was born in Manaus, Brazil, measured 19.7 inches long and weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces.
“I’m very happy, very excited,” new dad Paul told the network at the time. “I’m also very nervous and want to do everything the best that I can and do everything right. Everyone keeps asking how it feels to be a dad. Anyone can make a baby, but going through the day-to-day process of being a father is going to be a new experience. I’m very happy, very honored and very privileged and I want to make sure I do my absolute best for Pierre.”
First-time mom Karine added, “I am fine, and happy, even with the hard time I have had. And I am recovering well, but I am still very weak. It was super hard, but now everything is fine because the baby is calm and he is breastfeeding well.”
Though he claimed he and Karine had always been loving parents despite their disagreements with each other, Paul spoke openly about losing custody of their children in a September 2023 interview with Newsweek.
Paul opened up to the outlet about an infamous June 2022 ordeal in which Pierre was reported missing after CPS ordered the couple to turn their sons over to foster care. The agency believed Paul had taken Pierre and ran instead of complying with the demand.
Paul eventually gave his older son over to authorities, calling the implications that he had kidnapped Pierre a “misunderstanding” in July 2022.
The reality star added that the experience of being taken from his father was difficult for Pierre, who is “very attached” to him.
Ethan Staehle
In May 2020, Paul and Karine announced that they were expecting their second child together. Paul shared the good news by posting a photo of his wife’s baby bump to Instagram, with a heart drawn around her belly.
On February 5, 2021, the couple welcomed baby No.2, son Ethan.
“Ethan, born healthy and very fast,” Paul wrote via Instagram on the day of his son’s birth. Only a few hours earlier, Paul asked his followers for “prayers” as the pair awaited their son’s arrival “in a medical facility” — presumably in Karine’s home country of Brazil — amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before Ethan’s birth, Paul let his followers know that the couple’s NDA for 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? would prevent them from posting videos of their son for a while.
“While Karine will be doing video logs until day of birth, we will not be live-streaming or posting any of the video from [the] day of the birth and for a short time after,” he wrote in an Instagram Story on January 26, 2021.
He added, “Unfortunately, our new NDA [nondisclosure agreement] is a tad stricter. Karine’s mother is helping me make sure she is OK. Karine appreciates your prayers.”
Like his brother, Ethan has been in foster care since June 2022 following his parents’ verbal altercations at home. In Paul’s September 2023 interview with Newsweek, it was revealed that one of the TLC star’s cousins filed a motion to obtain custody of his children. However, the father of two hopes to welcome his sons back into his own home soon, noting at the time that he and Karine have almost completed their court-appointed “parenting skills” courses.
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