The REAL reason pop legend Cher is trying to take legal control of her troubled son’s life… at 47

Even after decades of an endlessly turbulent private life, Cher is not a superstar who seems plagued by self-doubt.

“I've always taken risks… It's WHO I am,” she bluntly proclaimed on social media just over a year ago as fans worried about her decision to start a relationship with 36-year-old music producer Alexander Edwards , 40 years younger than her. .

And the 77-year-old singer and actress has now certainly taken another chance with another man. Only this time, Elijah Blue Allman is her 47-year-old son.

Cher has filed in Los Angeles Superior Court to become the sole conservator of Allman, her son from second husband musician Greg Allman, due to his alleged substance abuse and mental health issues.

According to legal documents, she believes he cannot properly care for himself or “manage his own financial resources.”

She claims she has not been able to discuss “Elijah's preferences regarding the appointment of a temporary conservator” because his “mental and physical health issues” leave him “unable to form or express a preference.”

Any money he receives, she adds, “will immediately be spent on drugs, leaving Elijah without assets to support himself and putting Elijah's life in danger.”

A court-ordered conservatorship — which could give her control not only of the wallet, but also of many decisions in his personal life — is “urgently needed.”

Cher also revealed that Elijah does not own any property, but earns $120,000 a year from a trust fund set up by his father.

Cher is a master at reinventing careers, but her image as a floating, protective mother is certainly quite a transformation from what her children have previously said about her maternal instincts.

Her transgender son Chaz, from allegedly abusive first husband Sonny Bono, once somberly noted, “My mother didn't comfort me with kisses and hugs. It wasn't the family way.'

Elijah, meanwhile, told the Daily Mail in 2014 that parental support during his serious health problems was “not one of her strengths.”

Still, she's certainly taking a significant risk by filing for conservatorship of an adult child, considering the stink that ensued when Britney Spears' father did the same.

California law allowed Jamie Spears to take near-complete control of his troubled pop star daughter's personal life, career and $60 million for nearly fourteen years after convincing a court she couldn't handle it.

A judge ended the scheme in November 2021 after her fans and Britney outraged the court that she had been drugged, forced to perform and even prevented from having children under the 'abuse' scheme

At least unlike the much-maligned Jamie Spears, Cher cannot be accused of naked self-interest and of stealing her offspring's hard-earned fortune, which Spears denies.

However, the enormous power of the conservatorship system was exposed in the Spears case, and critics argued that whatever Britney's problems were, they did not justify the loss of freedom it entailed.

By her own admission, Cher may not have showered her children with conventional motherly affection as she fought to maintain one of show business's most enduringly successful careers, but the tough love of a conservatorship would be completely in keeping with her take-no-prisoners attitude. to take'. reputation.

Three months ago, she was accused of hiring four men to “kidnap” Elijah from a New York hotel room in November 2022 in an attempt to get him help for his addiction.

Cher dismissed the kidnapping claim as a “rumor,” adding that she wouldn't admit it if she ordered one. She said, 'I'm a mother. My job is to help my children in some way.”

She seems especially determined to keep her son away from his British wife Marieangela (Angie) King, 36. They married in 2013 but split in 2021 when Elijah filed for divorce citing “irreconcilable differences.”

King was born in India to British and German parents and is reportedly a cousin of ex-Chancellor George Osborne.

Cher's legal filing says King, who met Elijah on a blind date, cannot be his conservator because “their tumultuous relationship was marked by a cycle of drug addiction and mental health crises” and that King “does not support Elijah's recovery.”

King and Elijah remain legally married. In October, she filed a lawsuit saying they had agreed to pause their divorce proceedings, but she had not seen him in six months. King complained at the time that his mother was “interfering” with Elijah's health care.

While Britney Spears' vehement opposition to her conservatorship only gradually came to light over the years, Elijah has already posted on Instagram about “imprisonment via conservatorship.”

Responding through his attorney, he declined to say whether he planned to oppose his mother's petition at a hearing scheduled for next month.

He has previously made no secret of his instinctive rebellion and difficult relationship with Cher. He and King eloped ten years ago after his mother coldly rejected their engagement.

He later told the Mail: 'I've always been the black sheep of my family. The reason for this is that we just have different value systems and different mindsets, and that often clashes.”

He said that after he started his own hardcore rock band Deadsy with school friends in the mid-1990s, he and his mother had not spoken for several years.

Cher divorced Elijah's father in 1979 – just four years after they married – because she couldn't cope with his heroin addiction.

The Allman Brothers Band singer died of liver cancer in 2017, after being almost completely absent from Elijah's childhood.

Cher's determination to keep her children away from drugs failed miserably. Her eldest son, Chaz Bono, has also struggled with substance abuse.

Elijah, who said he grew up depending on some of his mother's famous boyfriends — such as Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise — for father figures, claims he started using cannabis at age 11 and buying drugs in Harlem while living in returned to his mother's house in Manhattan from boarding school over the weekend.

Telling a well-known story about troubled Hollywood offspring, he told the Mail that his mother's “superstar” deserved much of the blame for their family problems, leaving her children in the shadows and Cher prioritizing making money.

He added, “I think that's too big for anyone (famous) to get away with.”

He was sent to boarding school at the age of seven, a decision that left him feeling like his mother had “shunned” him, saying she once “punished” him for his misbehavior at school by sending him to a strict military academy for a year to send.

Later in life, he was romantically linked to socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, and actresses Heather Graham and Kate Hudson.

He said his drug problem worsened when he started touring with his band, claiming, “I was smoking heroin, taking a lot of pills, every painkiller we could get and drinking.”

When asked if Cher had been a good mother, he said: 'She's had her moments and I know she's tried. . . I know it's a real regret, something that will definitely haunt her.”

Cher has acknowledged that her children “paid for” her fame, telling Vanity Fair in 2010: “I tried my best, but it was still absolutely lacking.”

In the same interview, she also acknowledged the extent to which drug abuse had overshadowed her family, saying, “It's weird, because both of my kids had the same drug problems as their fathers – the same drug of choice.

'My father was a heroin addict and my sister's father was an alcoholic. But it caught us by surprise.”

Not that she shunned drugs because of “moral issues,” she emphasized. 'I tried a few medications, but I never felt out of control. I have the constitution of a fruit fly.'

Cher has never shied away from avoiding men who cause trouble. She now has a challenge that, as a difficult boyfriend, she will not get rid of so easily.