Perez Hilton's family life is under renewed scrutiny after his mother, Teresita Lavandeira, filed for temporary custody of his three children following a serious incident at his Miami home that led to his hospitalisation. The legal move has also revived public interest in how the celebrity blogger became a father as a single man.
One question has resurfaced repeatedly: who is the biological mother of his children? Another is why Hilton chose to build his family without a partner.
Perez Hilton's three children were born through gestational surrogacy using an anonymous egg donor. Hilton is the genetic father of all three children, while the women who carried the pregnancies were gestational surrogates.
Hilton has previously explained that all three children share the same anonymous egg donor, meaning the identity of their genetic mother has never been publicly disclosed.
His children are Mario Armando Lavandeira III, born in February 2013, Mia Alma Lavandeira, born in May 2015, and Mayte Amor Lavandeira, born in October 2017.
The anonymous egg donor is the children's genetic mother, while the gestational surrogates carried the pregnancies but are not genetically related to the children.
Hilton has long said becoming a parent was a deliberate decision rather than something he wanted to postpone while waiting for the right relationship.
Speaking to Yahoo Parenting in 2015, he admitted that raising children alone comes with significant challenges but said he was committed to building the family he had always wanted.
'I'm doing it by myself — being a single parent is hard,' Hilton said. 'I need to provide for my family and make smart decisions… I want my kids to go to good schools, so I put pressure on myself to work harder.'
He also revealed that becoming a father fundamentally changed his priorities, saying he constantly questioned whether he was spending enough time with his children while balancing work responsibilities.
Although Hilton has raised his children as a single parent, he has frequently credited his mother with playing an important supporting role. In the same interview, he said she lived with the family and helped care for the children alongside two full-time nannies, allowing him to continue working while remaining actively involved in their upbringing.
Over the years, Hilton has also said fatherhood changed his outlook on life and made him more conscious of protecting children from media attention. Once known for aggressively covering celebrity gossip, he later became a supporter of Hollywood's '#NoKidsPolicy', which campaigns against paparazzi photographing celebrities' children without consent.
The custody application follows Hilton's hospitalisation after a serious incident at his Miami home earlier this month.
His mother filed for temporary custody on 7 August, and Hilton subsequently consented to the arrangement.
Court documents reportedly grant Teresita Lavandeira temporary authority over important decisions concerning the children's medical care and education while Hilton recovers.