Judge allows Taylor Frankie Paul to have supervised visits with son

A Utah judge ruled Tuesday that reality TV star Taylor Frankie Paul can have supervised visits with the 2-year-old son she shares with Dakota Mortensen until another hearing for a protective order later this month.

Paul appeared remotely for the hearing on Tuesday with on-again, off-again ex-boyfriend Mortensen — the father of Paul’s third child, Ever — regarding his request for a restraining order. Paul had temporarily lost custody of their when a temporary protective order was awarded to Mortensen last month. Paul and Mortensen are known for their roles on the Hulu reality TV series “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”

Third district court commissioner Russell Minas decided on supervised visitation after Paul’s legal team voiced concern over Mortensen’s alleged lack of credibility and his attorneys raised worry over her “volatility,” citing separate incidents from May 2025 and February. Paul was granted up to eight hours a week of visitation.

“I have concerns going both ways, quite frankly,” Minas said, noting Mortensen’s alleged “pushing of buttons to get reaction” and Paul’s “troubling” reactions to the aggravation.

The embattled exes are also ordered to appear remotely at a court hearing on April 30 to go over the “merits and entry” of Mortensen’s protective order against Paul. Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Paul filed her own protective order against Mortensen.

Mortensen filed for his protective order following two incidents in February that involved “grabbing, scratching, shoving, and striking” that allegedly left Mortensen with marks on his neck, according to police documents.

Around the same time, the cast of “Mormon Wives” paused filming for Season 5 and, subsequently, the release of a video of a separate dispute in 2023 led to the shelving of Season 22 of ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” which featured Paul as its heroine. In the video, recorded by Mortensen on his cellphone, Paul can be seen screaming and throwing metal chairs, one of which struck one of her children who witnessed the altercation, according to the criminal indictment. Police body camera footage from that incident was documented in the first season of “Mormon Wives.”

That 2023 incident resulted in Paul being arrested; she eventually pleaded guilty in abeyance to aggravated assault, reducing her sentence, so long as she follows the terms of her probation. A final review hearing scheduled for early August could mark the end of that probation, but it’s unclear if the new allegations — police are also investigating a third domestic violence claim from Mortensen against Paul that took place in 2024 — will affect that.

How the outcomes of these various court decisions will affect “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and the unaired season of “The Bahcelorette” is yet to be seen. It has not been announced whether the dating series will eventually air, or if and when “Mormon Wives” will resume filming — and whether Paul will continue on as a cast member. (Both Hulu and ABC are owned by Disney.)

The judge’s order this week is the latest development in the fallout from the domestic violence investigation involving Paul and Mortensen.

Last week brought more collateral damage to Disney’s reality TV universe with the news that Mortensen’s storyline would be edited out of the new season of “Vanderpump Villa,” which follows former Bravo star Lisa Vanderpump and her staff at various luxury European estates. The third season of “Mormon Wives” featured the fallout from an explosive crossover with “Vanderpump Villa” that resulted in “Mormon Wives” stars Demi Engemann and Jessi Ngatikaura getting embroiled in drama with staff member Marciano Brunette, who alleges he had intimate connections with both women. The fourth season of “Mormon Wives” revisits the crossover, with some of the women’s spouses and exes, who call themselves #DadTok, partaking in their own “Villa” getaway that fuels more drama, including between Mortensen and Paul.

Season 3 of “Vanderpump Villa,” which starts streaming on April 16, is expected to capture that stay, except now without Mortensen’s storyline. But he isn’t totally off screens. Mortensen is set to appear in “Unwell Winter Games,” a YouTube reality competition series produced by Alex Cooper, that premiered on Monday.