Katie Holmes has full custody of Suri and currently lives with her in New York City.
Katie Holmes is a strong and proud mama! As a single parent, she's been raising her daughter, Suri, the best way she knows how and it's clear that their bond is stronger than ever.
“You’d struggle to find a mom-daughter duo who are more in sync with each other,” an insider told Us Weekly. “They’re a real team—their connection is a beautiful thing to witness.” It's also hard to ignore how beautiful the two of them are. Suri was recently spotted looking absolutely stunning as she turns 16 years old. Appearance-wise, it seems she has the perfect set of traits from both her parents, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise.
Cruise and Holmes first began dating in 2005 and got engaged just after seven weeks of dating. According to Stylecaster, they welcomed their daughter in April 2006. While Holmes was raised Catholic, she reportedly began converting to Cruise’s Church of Scientology. However, the two split in 2012 and it was reported that Holmes wanted to protect Suri from Scientology.
A source told PEOPLE that Holmes was increasingly unhappy in her marriage as she realized “she no longer had the life she wanted, in terms of her career, her way of life, everything." “It’s clear that Tom can be very persuasive and is very powerful. But once she decided to go, she was done,” said an insider, who joined several sources in refuting reports that Holmes feared for her safety or that Scientology was the overriding factor in the split. Rather, “she is the daughter of a lawyer: She knew she had to have everything locked down before she pulled the trigger because there could be no wiggle room if she didn’t want this to turn into a long, drawn-out battle,” said the insider. “She wanted this to happen fast, and severing all ties in one fell swoop was the best way for that to happen.” Both Holmes and Cruise have remained tight-lipped about the exact reasoning behind their divorce but sources claim that Cruise was left shocked by Holmes's decision.
A former Scientologist Samantha Domingo, who left the organization in 2004, told Us Weekly that Cruise is “not allowed” to have a relationship with his teenage daughter because she’s not a Scientologist. The last time the 59-year-old actor was spotted with his daughter was in 2013. A spokeswoman for the Church, however, denied all of Domingo’s allegations, calling them “fiction.” In 2018, a source told the outlet, “Every person is allowed to see their child if they wanted to. He chooses not to because she is not a Scientologist.”
In fact, after the divorce in 2012, the father and daughter have rarely been spotted together. According to Hollywood Life, the last known photos of Suri and her dad are from nearly a decade ago in 2012 when the pair visited Disneyland together. A source who spoke to the outlet in April 2019 revealed that despite their estranged relationship, Tom “still loves” Suri. “As challenging as things have become for him and his daughter, he still loves her,” the insider revealed at the time. “Tom never intended to be estranged from his daughter when he decided to have a family with Katie, and he looks forward to repairing their relationship one day.”
For now, the mother-daughter duo seems to be a happy family and is a reminder that not all "families" need to look alike. On April 18th, Holmes shared a photo series on her Instagram in honor of Suri's 15th birthday, writing: Happy 15th Birthday Sweetheart! I love you!!!!!!!! ❤️💕😘 I can’t believe you are already 15! Katie and Suri are a happy mother-daughter duo, whether rumors of Cruise not seeing his daughter in a decade are true or not. “My biggest goal has always been to nurture [Suri] into her individuality,” Katie told InStyle. "To make sure she is 100 percent herself and strong, confident, and able. And to know it.”
References:
https://www.instyle.com/celebrity/katie-holmes-april-2020-cover
https://hollywoodlife.com/2019/04/18/tom-cruise-suri-birthday-plans-relationship/
https://people.com/archive/cover-story-tom-cruise-katie-holmes-what-really-happened-vol-78-no-4/
https://stylecaster.com/tom-cruise-kids/
Cover Images Source: Photos by Toby Canham| Getty Images
