SerpApi.Org
Cher prevailed in her royalties dispute with Mary Bono, but she will have to cover her own legal costs.
A federal judge ruled on July 21, 2026 that Sonny Bono's widow does not have to cover the roughly $1 million in attorney fees Cher racked up during their years-long royalties fight — meaning the pop icon walks away the clear winner on the merits, but stuck with her own legal tab. U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt denied Cher's motion to recover $1,023,605 in fees, leaving her to absorb the full cost herself.
That's the sting in an otherwise decisive victory. Cher already won the thing that actually mattered. In the final judgment signed November 26, 2025, Kronstadt awarded her $418,156.82 in unpaid composition royalties that music publisher Wixen had been holding, and affirmed her right to keep collecting 50% of Sonny's songwriting royalties on Sonny & Cher classics like "I Got You Babe." Those rights trace back to the pair's 1978 divorce agreement — and the court found Mary Bono couldn't claw them back.
Here's the background. Cher sued in October 2021 after Mary Bono tried to use copyright termination provisions to reclaim the royalty share Cher had held for decades. Bono's argument leaned on the federal Copyright Act, which lets authors and heirs recapture rights after a set window. Kronstadt didn't buy it. He ruled the 1978 divorce settlement was a contract, and that Mary Bono couldn't use federal copyright law to undo a deal Cher bargained for in her divorce. Cher's 2022 sale of her royalty interests to Iconic Artists Group didn't change the outcome either — the court upheld her right to be paid directly.
So why does Cher have to swallow her own legal costs after winning? That contract-versus-copyright distinction cuts both ways. Fee-shifting — the rule that can force the losing side to pay the winner's lawyers — is common in federal copyright cases. But Kronstadt reasoned that because the dispute turned on interpreting a contract rather than on the Copyright Act itself, the provisions that would have justified making Mary Bono pay simply didn't apply. Cher prevailed on the law; the law just doesn't hand her the bill.
Neither camp is saying much publicly. Representatives for both Cher and Mary Bono declined to comment on the fee ruling. Mary Bono's attorney Daniel Schacht previously signaled an appeal on the underlying copyright question, arguing the judge "got the law wrong on copyright terminations" and that authors' heirs deserve the rights "Congress intended."
For Cher, the math still favors her — a $418,000-plus award and permanent control of her share of the Sonny & Cher catalog, against a seven-figure legal spend she'd rather have recouped. For everyone else in the music business, the ruling is a quiet reminder: how a rights fight is framed, contract or copyright, can decide who pays the lawyers even when the verdict is lopsided.
The result leaves Cher with the royalty rights she fought to preserve, but without reimbursement for the cost of doing so.
