Paternity Suit Ends, Ali to Create Fund for Girl

Lawyers for former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali on Tuesday agreed to set up a trust for the 11-year-old daughter of a woman whom the fighter married in 1975 in an Islamic ceremony that has never been legally recognized.

The agreement will provide between $18,000 and $20,000 a year for the support and education of Khaliah Ali and settles a paternity suit filed in Los Angeles in January, 1985, by her mother, Aaisha Ali, 29.

The girl and her mother, who still has a “palimony” suit pending against Ali in Philadelphia where she lives, were both in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Stephen Lachs, as was Ali, when lawyers for both sides announced their agreement. Afterward, Ali hugged the girl and said he wanted to take care of “all of my kids.”

He said he has “eight kids” altogether. “He’s doing more than a court would ask him to do,” attorney E. Robert Lemkin said of his client, Ali. The girl was 11 months old when Ali and Aaisha exchanged Islamic wedding vows in a ceremony in Florida.