Two years into their split, The Valley‘s Michelle Saniei and Jesse Lally were still navigating complications that delayed them from finalizing their divorce.
How to Watch
The Valley Season 3 airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo. Episodes stream next day on Peacock.Â
Michelle explained the latest financial roadblock during a hike with Lala Kent in Season 3, Episode 9. By her account, Jesse had taken out a $300,000 Small Business Administration (SBA) loan, unbeknownst to her, during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said that he deposited all the funds into his checking account, spent all the money, and never paid back a dime.
“When I asked for a divorce, he’s like, ‘By the way, I got a $300,000 loan, and you have to pay half because you were married to me,'” Michelle informed Lala. “The one problem is it’s been in collections because he hasn’t made a payment. So now, they want us to pay, I think close to $30,000 up front, and then start making the monthly payments. But he called me last week, and he’s like, ‘I don’t have that money. I can’t pay $15,000.'”
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In a confessional, Michelle unpacked the reason why she agreed to take on half of Jesse’s debt, rather than put up a fight.
“I could’ve gone to court, but my lawyer said, you know what, you’re gonna spend the money, you’re gonna spend the time,” she elaborated. “And at that point, I said it’s not even worth it. I will eat the $300,000 and split it with him. It was the only way I was gonna get a divorce from him.”
As Michelle later told Jesse directly over coffee, “I’m willing to take half of [the] $300,000 debt and just walk away. I get nothing from getting divorced… In fact, it hurts me. But I want to move on because we can’t just be married forever.”
Michelle Saniei sheds new light on Jesse Lally’s $300,000 loan debt
On The Valley After Show, Michelle clarified that she actually did know that Jesse had borrowed money, but claimed that he told her it was just “a small COVID loan.” She added, “I think I thought it was like $10,000. … He raised it and raised it, and it was $300,000.”
In the interim, she alleged that Jesse dropped roughly $100,000 on a three-week trip to the United Kingdom with her, as well as his parents and brother, that included a helicopter tour of Scotland.
RELATED: See Inside Michelle Saniei’s House, with the “One Thing” She Kept in the Divorce (EXCLUSIVE)
“We still haven’t started paying the loan off,” Michelle updated viewers, noting that the interest is also still accruing. “The worst part about the story is, like, we had the money. We didn’t need to get a loan. We were great business partners. We sold a lot of homes. And we were making a lot of money. … And he was spending more than we were making.”
She continued, “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much you make if you spent it all. And that’s just kind of his mentality. He always thinks, like, money will come, so it doesn’t matter if you spend every single penny that you have.”
Jesse Lally responds to Michelle Saniei’s claims about his small business loan
Jesse, for his part, referred to the “loan thing” as “the most beaten horse of all time” on the After Show, before sharing his side of the story.
“We took out a loan during COVID when everything shut down,” he said. “It was a low-interest SBA small business loan for our business. We used it to market a $65 million sale, for some travel stuff, and some other business expenses. … It’s not the end of the world either. It’s not like I have a $30 million loan out.”
Following Michelle’s claim in Episode 9 that he couldn’t even afford his $200 share of their 6-year-old daughter Isabella’s monthly health insurance payment, Jesse also defended his lifestyle choices.
“Michelle’s idea that I was spending all this money on wine and whatever is just not true,” he insisted. “It wasn’t that I had this, like, extravagant lifestyle and, you know, I made more money, I became douchier. It was like there were certain aspects of life that I wanted to kind of live. And I didn’t go to Capri because all the billionaires live there. I went to Capri because it made me happy.”
Are Michelle Saniei and Jesse Lally divorced now?
As they continue to navigate their new normal, don’t miss how Jesse reacted to Michelle’s post-split dating life on The Valley.
