Katherine Berkery is a former model best known as the mother of Jonathan Berkery, the son of Welsh singer Sir Tom Jones. A brief encounter in New York in 1987 led to a paternity case, a 1989 settlement, and a legal fight that reached a Florida appeals court in 1998.
Most of what the internet repeats about her is thin, and some of it is wrong. This article sticks to what court records and named news outlets support, and it marks everything else as reported or unconfirmed. The court record also contradicts the child support figures that appear on most biography pages.
Who Is Katherine Berkery?
Katherine Berkery worked as a model in the 1980s and later moved into real estate, according to biography sites such as Legit.ng and Bgo Magazine. Beyond that, her public profile is narrow. She has not written a memoir, and no long on-the-record interview about her own life is known to exist.
She became a name in newspapers because of one legal dispute. Jones was already an international star with hits like “It’s Not Unusual” and “Delilah,” and he was married at the time. The case put a private person in front of a tabloid audience, and she stepped back from public view once it ended.
Her later career is the least documented part. Katherine Berkery is reported to have worked in real estate, and a 2013 Daily Mail piece is cited by biography sites as calling her an estate agent. The original article was not available to check, so the detail stays in the reported category.
People who search her name usually want four answers: who she is, how she met Jones, what happened in court, and where she is now. The last answer is shorter than most pages admit.
What Is Known About Her Early Life
Several profile sites say Berkery was born in Korea, adopted as a child, and raised by a family in New Jersey. Many give 1963 as her birth year. None of them point to a birth record or a first-person account.
Contemporary reporting does not line up neatly either. The Daily Mail reported in 2018 that she was 24 when she met Jones in October 1987, which fits a 1963 birth. A Los Angeles Times report from September 1989, as cited by Bgo Magazine, described her as 27, which points to an earlier year.
The safest reading is that she was born in the early 1960s. Her birthplace, her adoption, and her exact age are reported but not confirmed. A precise birthday on a biography page is a guess.
How She Met Tom Jones in 1987
Katherine Berkery met Tom Jones in New York in October 1987, while he was in town for concerts. The Daily Mail has described the encounter as a three-day fling. The Florida appeals court, in a 1998 opinion, put it more plainly: they met after one of his concerts, and the relationship was a single encounter.
Those two descriptions do not clash as much as they seem to. One counts days and the other counts the relationship, and neither source gives an hour-by-hour account. Many online retellings add dinner scenes and hotel details that no court document supports, so this article leaves them out.
The Daily Mail described her as a 24-year-old model at the time, and Jones was 47. The gap in age and fame is part of why the story drew so much press. The court opinion, by contrast, covers the same facts in a few plain sentences and moves straight to the legal questions.
The court did record one fact that matters for context. Jones and the mother never married or lived together. Jones was married to his childhood sweetheart, Linda Trenchard, who died in 2016.
The 1988 Birth and the New York Paternity Case
Jonathan Berkery was born in 1988, and the date most often given is June 27. A few sites say 1987, which cannot be right if his parents met in October 1987. The appeals court opinion also places his birth in 1988.
After the birth, Berkery brought a paternity action against Jones in a New York court. The court adjudicated Jones as the father. While that ruling was on appeal in 1989, the two sides settled.
The Daily Mail has reported that Jones denied being the father until a court-ordered paternity test in 1989. The appeals opinion does not mention a test, so that detail rests on press reporting alone. The court record confirms the adjudication and the settlement that followed.
What the Court Record Says About the Settlement
The 1998 opinion in Woodward v. Berkery is the most detailed public account of the money. Jones’s legal name is Thomas John Woodward, which is why his surname leads the case title. The judges summarized the 1989 agreement this way:
- Child support of $33,500 a year, paid monthly, which works out to about $2,792 a month.
- A lump sum of $37,433 for the mother’s expenses and $59,000 toward her attorney’s fees.
- Health benefits for the boy equal to those Jones gave one of his own employees.
- Private school costs, with tuition at a level no lower than the priciest Ivy League universities charge.
A New York court approved the agreement in 1989. In 1992 the two sides changed it. She released Jones from the health benefits in exchange for a one-time payment of $40,000, and the New York court approved that change too.
Why the Online Child Support Numbers Do Not Match
Search her name and you will see $1,700 a month, $200 a week, and $2,500 a month, sometimes on the same results page. None of them match the court’s figure.
The $1,700 number appears to come from the Daily Mail, which reported the payment as 1,700 pounds a month. Many sites later copied it as dollars. The $200 weekly figure is attributed to an attorney for the mother in older coverage, and it may describe an earlier stage of the case, though the sources do not say. The $2,500 figure shows up on a single biography site with no source.
The appeals opinion is the better guide because the judges were summarizing the signed agreement. It covers the 1989 terms and the 1992 change only, and it does not say what Jones paid in every later year.
The Florida Fight Over a Higher Payment
The money story did not end in 1989. In 1996 Berkery filed in Broward County, Florida, asking a court there to adopt the New York judgments so she could seek a higher payment. She pointed to a revival in Jones’s career and to the fact that her son had grown. She served Jones with papers while he was in the state for a concert.
The court itself called requests like hers common. A trial judge awarded her interim attorney’s fees and suit money totaling $137,289, on top of $20,000 Jones had already paid voluntarily. Jones filed an affidavit stating net income of $89,000 a month, and the trial court allowed broad financial discovery. The Miami Herald asked to oppose a request to keep that information confidential.
In February 1998, Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed the fee award and threw out the discovery orders. It said the New York judgments rested on agreements both sides had made, and that a Florida court first had to decide whether it could change them at all. The opinion also noted that the mother had said she intended to share financial information with the press. The ruling dealt with procedure and did not decide whether support should rise.
The timing adds context. By the mid-1990s Jones had returned to wide popularity, and the mother’s filing leaned on that revival. The opinion says nothing about her motives beyond what her filings stated, so readers should be wary of sites that claim to know them.
Jonathan Berkery and the Years Without His Father
Jonathan Berkery grew up without contact with his father. He told the Mail on Sunday in 2018 that no birthday card, Christmas card, or call ever came. At 29 he was busking in Hoboken, New Jersey, as Jon Jones, singing songs his father made famous.
“All I ever wanted was his love,” he told the paper. Jones acknowledged his son in a 2008 interview, saying the pregnancy had not been planned, and Jonathan said those words hurt. Jones’s other son, Mark Woodward, born in 1957, grew up inside the family and later became his manager.
Jonathan’s experience is his own. Nothing in the public record supports using his hardships to judge how his mother raised him, and she has not publicly described those years. As of November 2026, no reconciliation between Jones and his son has been publicly confirmed.
Why Her Case Still Gets Cited in Court
The Florida decision has a second life outside celebrity coverage. A later Florida Bar Journal article on certiorari review discusses Woodward v. Berkery, and the HallApproved case-law database lists 27 later published decisions that cite it. Most of them involve financial discovery, privacy, and interim attorney’s fees in family cases.
That gives Katherine Berkery an unusual footprint. Her name appears in family law citations as well as in tabloid headlines, and the legal point is about how far a court should let one parent dig into the other’s finances when a signed agreement already exists. Whether a reader finds that outcome fair depends on how much weight they give to agreements parents make versus a child’s changing needs, and the opinion itself leans toward the agreement.
Readers who want a firm timeline can rely on four dated points: the meeting in October 1987, the birth in 1988, the settlement in 1989, and the Florida ruling in 1998. Everything between those points comes from interviews and press accounts, and each of those carries the bias of whoever is speaking.
What Is Not Publicly Confirmed
Many pages list a net worth for Katherine Berkery, along with a height, weight, and religion. One site puts her net worth at $500,000 and credits modeling income. No financial record, interview, or filing supports that number. When she filed in Florida in the mid-1990s, the appeals court noted, her financial affidavit showed no income apart from the child support she received.
The same caution applies to claims about work in Paris and Milan, an exact residence, and a current relationship status. The only confirmed professional detail is that 1980s coverage called her a model, and later accounts place her in real estate.
Where Katherine Berkery Is Now
No outlet has reliably reported where Katherine Berkery lives or what she does today. She appears to have stepped back from public attention after the 1998 ruling, and nothing suggests she has sought it since.
Her occupation, any new court filings, and any statement from Jonathan or Tom Jones about their relationship will need rechecking over time. Until a named source reports otherwise, silence is the accurate answer.