Who Is Kandi Burruss' Baby Daddy? He Owes Her "Close to $100,000" in Support
Updated Dec. 13 2020, 3:56 p.m. ET
Kandi Burruss’ drama with baby daddy Russell “Block” Spencer resurfaced in the Season 13 premiere of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which aired on Dec. 6. In the episode, Kandi and her daughter, Riley, talk about Block, Riley’s estranged father, as the teen prepares to go to New York University to study law. Let's take a closer look at what happened.
Kandi says Block owes her “close to $100,000.”
As Kandi and Riley discuss the expense of an NYU education in the Season 13 premiere, Riley says it’s time for Block — the music mogul behind Block Entertainment — to support her financially.
Riley and Block in 2016
“I feel like my father never really did anything,” she says. “Like, it’s time for him to at least provide something when I’m going away to college.”
In a confessional, Kandi discusses her and Block’s child support arrangement claims that he owes her “close to $100,000.”
He was “only the bum father” to Riley, she says.
During their conversation, Kandi asks Riley whether she would be open to a relationship with her father if he pays up, but Riley says he’s been acting like a “bum father.”
“Wasn’t I, like, 15 when he came around and tried to start talking again?” Riley asks her mom. “When you are only the bum father to me, it just kind of rubs me the wrong way because you had the capability to be there, because I can see it with all your other children. … I don’t know. I have the people around me who I’m already comfortable with, so I feel like I just kind of moved past the point where he’s necessary. … It’s not my fault. It’s his fault.”
And in a confessional, Kandi explains Riley’s disappointment in her dad. “For her as a little kid, she’s like ‘Well, my dad says he’s coming,’ and then he wouldn’t come, and then she’d be all upset, and that would upset me," the reality star says. “It would be hard for Block to bond with Riley this late in life. He thinks he can just decide that he can [reach out] that she’s supposed to welcome him with open arms, and it did not work out that way. He’s really hurt and he does not get it.”
Kandi previously called Block the “poster boy for deadbeat.”
In a 2016 RHOA episode, Kandi called Block the “poster boy for deadbeat,” saying that he went “years without checking in” on Riley.
“We really don’t talk,” she said on the show. “I’ve always tried to be open whenever he reach out… [but] I don’t respect him no more.”
In that episode, Kandi told former RHOA star Sherée Whitfield that when she found out she was pregnant with Riley, Block told her by phone that he wouldn’t be involved.
“I told him that day, ‘That’s fine, motherf--ker, because you’ll never have to worry about how she is. You’ll need her before she needs you,’” she told Sherée, per People. “And I meant that s--t. I meant it.”
The former Xscape singer also said that she doesn’t stand in the way of Riley’s relationship with her father but she protects certain information from her daughter.
“Even if I can’t stand his punk ass, if he wants her to call him, I make her call him,” she said at the time. “But if I really say the s--t that he’s done that she ain’t privy to, that’s gonna hurt my daughter.”
