Don’t get me wrong, I think Joe Jonas is a creep, a jerk and probably quite sexist too. He clearly wanted Sophie Turner to be his tradwife, and he backtracked in a hurry when his week-long smear campaign against Sophie backfired. All that being said, as Sophie and Joe’s dueling legal filings have shown, Joe is a lot more prepared than Sophie. He’s been preparing for this divorce for months, he’s listening to his lawyers and, by filing for divorce first in Florida, he’s done a lot to control how the divorce and custody battles will proceed. All Sophie has is… a letter. A letter Joe wrote when they were shopping for real estate in the UK.

Sophie Turner has filed legal documents that include a heartfelt letter written by Joe Jonas to the seller of the U.K. home the former couple intended to purchase together before their split. The exes have been involved in a contentious ongoing custody dispute about where their children — Willa, 3, and Delphine, 14 months — should live in the wake of their divorce. The Game of Thrones actress, 27, claimed in an earlier filing that the family’s home base was in the U.K. and revealed she and the Jonas Brothers singer, 34, had entered into a contract to buy a home in her native country.

According to Page Six, Jonas reportedly wrote in part, “When my wife and I decided we were going to spend more time in the UK and search for a permanent home, our daughter expressed three unwavering requirements: having chickens, a pony and a Wendy house … While many of the houses we viewed met this criteria, the moment we turned the corner and caught sight of the charming blue shutters adorning [redacted], we experienced a sense of magic unlike anything we had felt before.”

He also reportedly wrote to the owner: “We can envision our children growing up here and making this our forever home,” and, “I really think Sophie and I will be able to look after [redacted names] and for many years pay homage to the magic you have created here.”

However, a source close to the situation tells PEOPLE of the house in England, “They did not buy the house. The house is in escrow, the sale never closed.” According to an earlier filing from Turner, they began looking for a house in the U.K. in Dec. 2022. The search continued through July 2023, when they entered into a contract to purchase a property, but the deal would not be completed until December 2023.

“They have never been residents of the U.K.,” the source adds. “Residency is a legal term and that is how the courts will define it. Residency includes things like where you have your driver’s license, where you vote, where your kids go to school, where you last lived as a family for a significant period of time (specifically 6 months).”

In 2021, Turner and Jonas had purchased and completely redecorated a family residence in Miami. They listed it for sale in April 2023 and sold the property for $15 million in August. Referencing this property, the source continued, “There is no place the family lived for 6 months or longer other than Florida. Intention, expressed in a letter or otherwise, does not equal residency. Actions do. And so while the letter was inserted in the motion in order to pique the attention of reporters, it won’t actually be material to determine legal residency.”

[From People]

Yeah… Joe’s side is correct. While the letter shows that Joe, at one time, intended to buy a home in the UK, it’s not some smoking gun which proves that Joe and Sophie lived in the UK, had established residency in the UK or that this is a British family court issue. Like, it sort of feels like Sophie’s biggest issue with Joe is that he changed his mind about moving to the UK, or that he was never even sold completely on the move in the first place. This letter would be a smoking gun in a civil case if Sophie was suing him over a failed real estate deal, but in a divorce case, the letter isn’t that important?

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.