- Rymir Satterthwaite, now 30, has been embroiled in a 10-year legal battle with Jay-Z, 53, over claims the rapper is his biological father
- In February, Rymir filed a motion with the Supreme Court seeking to have the case overturned and accused Jay-Z of keeping it secret to avoid a paternity test
- In a letter to DailyMail.com, Jay-Z’s lawyers dismissed Rymir’s claims
The 30-year-old, who claims to be Jay-Z’s secret illegitimate son, has accused the world-famous rapper of abusing the legal system to evade a paternity test for more than a decade.
Rymir Satterthwaite has been struggling to prove Jay-Z – real name Shawn Carter – is his biological father since he was 21, and is now taking that battle to the Supreme Court in a bid to unseal the case and force Carter to die to do a DNA test.
Speaking to DailyMail.com about the latest twist in the roller coaster case, New Jersey’s Rymir insisted he wants nothing more than to see “justice done” and will stop at nothing to ensure that happens .
He added that he doesn’t want anything from the billionaire rapper – who was married to pop superstar Beyonce – other than for Jay-Z to recognize him as his son.
In a letter to DailyMail.com, Jay-Z’s lawyers dismissed Rymir’s claims, stating: “The allegations have previously been thoroughly examined and refuted by courts. I am certain that this will be the result of all submissions that Mr Satterthwaite is currently considering.”
Jay-Z’s alleged illegitimate son Rymir Sattherthwaite (seen in 2015) has filed an application to the Supreme Court accusing the rapper of abusing the legal system to avoid a DNA test. Rymir claims that Jay-Z, 53, had a romantic affair with his late mother Wanda in the early 1990s. The rapper has never denied the romance but has refused to take a paternity test
“This will not be over until justice is done,” says Rymir. “I just want to live my life and when it’s all said and done, I hope Jay-Z wants to be a part of my life if that’s God’s will.”
“I won’t stop fighting for it until I win. And I will win because the law is on our side.’
To that end, Rymir filed a new motion with the New Jersey Supreme Court in February this year, obtained by DailyMail.com, asking the court to unseal years’ worth of documents dating back to 2012 — with Wraps’ reasoning that the case would go ahead prevented him from getting his due process.
The motion – which details all facets of the year-long case in a 29-page document – was denied by the Supreme Court because the court said it had no jurisdiction to reopen the matter before the Court of Appeals or to unseal files in the magistrates’ court.
It was then resubmitted by Rymir to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Supreme Court, which is reviewing the matter.
It marks the latest twist in a very twisted and protracted case — which Rymir says began in the fall of 1992 when his late mother, Wanda, claimed she had sex with Jay-Z while she was in a back-off romance with her high school sweetheart.
Back then, Wanda was 16 and Jay-Z 22 – and a far cry from the global rap sensation he’s become since the release of his debut studio album, Reasonable Doubt, in 1996.
The affair, Rymir says, was short-lived, and by the time he was born in July 1993, the supposed romance between his mother and Jay-Z had already ended.
That’s partly why, he claims, his mother put the name of her high school boyfriend Robert Graves — who by this point had rekindled his romance with Wanda, who was by her side when she was born in the hospital — on her birth certificate son as his biological father.
However, according to a family insider, Wanda always knew Robert wasn’t Rymir’s father — something made all the more apparent as her son grew up and bore no resemblance to her high school sweetheart.
The 30-year-old (pictured with his late mother, Wanda) says she told him Jay-Z was his father when he was just eight, and he’s been struggling to prove it since he was 21
DailyMail.com has reached out to everyone involved, including Jay-Z and Jay-Z’s attorney, Lise Fisher.
When Rymir was eight, his mother told him that Jay-Z – who by then had made his mark as a global music icon – was his real father.
However, the question of Rymir’s paternity only became a legal battle in 2010 — two years after Jay-Z married his wife Beyonce — when Wanda’s health began to deteriorate.
At the time, she insisted she was only having sex with two men, her high school sweetheart Michael and Jay-Z, at the time of Rymir’s conception, and requested that a Pennsylvania court take paternity tests on both men to determine the right one was the father of her son.
When the court issued an order, Robert agreed to undergo a genetic test – which once proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he and Rymir had no biological relationship.
Robert’s name was removed from Rymir’s birth certificate by the court and has remained blank ever since.
In 2011, Wanda gave custody of their son to their godmother Lillie Coley, who vowed to continue the fight to prove Rymir’s father’s identity once and for all, telling DailyMail.com: “I was just trying to help my goddaughter Child has a relationship with his father.
“It was so hard for him because he was torn away from his mother and didn’t have anyone to call daddy.”
That same year, Lillie contacted Lise Fisher, Jay-Z’s attorney, and asked that he take a DNA test in New Jersey, where he and Rymir were based.
Rymir (photographed on his way to court with his mother in 2014) claims Jay-Z avoided taking a paternity test, filing lawsuits against him
Rymir and Lillie say they complied with the request – but never received a response from Jay-Z’s legal team about the genetic test results.
That same year, multiple reports surfaced claiming Jay-Z had fathered another son with a Trinidadian model, Shennelle Scott — claims that the rapper’s team were quick to dismiss as “ridiculous rumors.”
Lillie and Rymir began taking legal action against Jay-Z in 2012, a battle that has spanned more than a decade since then and has seen the couple locked in endless legal battles with the rapper.
During that time, Rymir insists Jay-Z’s legal team has made endless attempts to subvert the legal system to avoid a paternity test, which the 30-year-old claims would end the case once and for all.
Documentation on each court case accompanies Rymir’s new Supreme Court filing, seen by DailyMail.com, which outlines how the case began with a pretrial in Camden County, New Jersey on August 13, 2012.
During the pretrial, Jay-Z’s attorney argued that Lillie — who was acting as Rymir’s legal guardian — had “no jurisdiction” over his case because it was first filed by his mother, Wanda, in Pennsylvania, and therefore should be heard in the same state .
The rapper’s attorneys also insisted that the case should therefore be dismissed in its entirety because Rymir was over 18 at the time of the pretrial and, under Pennsylvania state law, paternity must be established before a child reaches adulthood.
However, the court disagreed, ruling that the case should be tried under New Jersey law, which states that the age of “parenting” is 23.
Jay-Z’s legal team then argued that the rapper should be exempted from a DNA test in New Jersey because he didn’t live or own property there — despite several news articles linking him to homes in Alpine and Newport.
“My client has no contacts in New Jersey. He doesn’t own any apartments. He doesn’t own anything in Alpine. He doesn’t own anything in Newport. I don’t know why this information is out there. It’s on the internet,” his attorney told the court.
Based on this reasoning, the judge dismissed the lawsuit.
However, Rymir’s attorneys immediately appealed the verdict, insisting they had evidence in the form of three title deeds and tax records proving that Jay-Z owned multiple properties in New Jersey and that his attorney had therefore committed “fraud,” by claiming otherwise in court.
Several of the properties still list Jay-Z as the owner under his real name, Shawn Corey Carter. In addition, some of his immediate family members are also listed.
Rymir and his legal team filed the warrants as evidence of their appeal and the case was reopened on December 12, 2012. During a hearing at that trial, Jay-Z’s attorney found that she had “misworded” where he actually lived — having told the court that the rapper resided at 411 Broadway in New York City, which is actually the office of his record label Roc Nation.
“I misspoke at the last hearing because I really thought Broadway was his home address,” Fisher explained.
However, the case was still dismissed after the rapper’s attorney claimed Rumir was unable to prove that the “Shawn Corey Carter” listed on the deeds was actually her client and not another person with the same name.
DailyMail.com obtained court transcripts dated August 13, 2012, in which Jay-Z’s attorney, Lise Fisher, told the court that he “doesn’t own any homes” in New Jersey, thereby denying the state authority to require him to take the paternity test DailyMail.com also obtained title deeds and tax records for several properties allegedly owned by Jay-Z in 2012. Lillie presented those documents to the court to show that Jay-Z owned real estate in New Jersey, which would give the court jurisdiction to require DNA testing. However, the court ruled in favor of Jay-Z. Civil rights groups NAACP and ACLU are fighting for Rymir and have sent several letters to the New Jersey state legislature demanding that Rymir be given due process
“Plaintiff’s request for genetic testing and assistance is denied without prejudice for lack of factual and personal jurisdiction over defendant Shawn Corey Carter,” the court ruled.
The decision was a huge blow to Rymir and Lillie – who insists to DailyMail.com Jay-Z’s legal team made “false statements” in order to influence the court’s decision.
In December 2014, Rymir filed a civil lawsuit against Jay-Z and his attorney, in which the rapper’s legal team made the same argument they used at the 2012-2013 hearing – that he does not own any property in New Jersey and therefore could not be subject to a state determination of paternity.
Again, the court ruled in favor of Jay-Z and dismissed the case.
“At the time I had spent well over $20,000 on lawyers and other things related to this case,” Rymir told DailyMail.com. “I didn’t have that much money, but I knew it was the right thing to do.”
So far, the entire case has been sealed by the court – meaning the public cannot obtain a file on the case, which Rymir hopes to change with his new Supreme Court filing.
Despite the disappointing decision, Rymir has continued to fight to prove his paternity, something his mother Wanda spoke about on her deathbed before her death in 2016.
“My name is Wanda Satterthwaite and I am Rymir Satterthwaite’s mother,” she explained in a video shared with RadarOnline. “Today is April 20, 2016 and I want the world to know that I am supporting my son in his paternity suit with Shawn Corey Carter. I stand by my allegations about this man.’
Rymir continued to fight his case after his mother’s death, suing Jay-Z for civil damages in 2015, claiming the rapper prevented him from getting closure.
In 2017, Rymir and Lillie filed a civil rights lawsuit before Judge Glenn A. Grant alleging violations, including failure to follow normal court service procedures on grounds of gender, class, and retaliation.
They also filed civil rights complaints with the New Jersey Attorney General, the New Jersey Governor, various New Jersey Senators, and the New Jersey Judicial Conduct Board.
They repeated the civil rights violation complaints to the same parties in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Once again, all cases were dismissed.
In a 2022 YouTube video, Rymir made his feelings clear about the case, telling the world: “I don’t feel that our rights are valued. There is a lot of fraud and collusion going on. I won’t let that happen.
“We’re going in there with our hard-earned money to fight fraud. The judges allow it. Someone above them should be held responsible.
“I just want everyone to keep their eyes peeled. We should never walk into a courtroom feeling like a victim. We were kicked and tried to be dragged through the system.
“I will not allow anyone to write this in my name, my mother’s name or my godmother’s name. We will fight for what is right, just like we have done all these years,” Rymir said in the video.
Jay-Z has never spoken publicly about the case.
However, he vaguely addressed the allegations in his 2018 album with Beyoncé, titled The Carters – You Heard About Us.
The song’s lyrics read, “Billie Jean in his prime. For the thousandth time, the child is not mine. Online they jokingly call me Dad. You shouldn’t take this father thing literally.”