After more than six decades of surviving — and often rewriting — the rules of the entertainment industry, Cher has added another unlikely title to her résumé: legal trailblazer. In a landmark federal ruling handed down this week, the 79-year-old icon secured a decisive $418,000 victory over Mary Bono, settling a long-simmering dispute over royalties from her work with late ex-husband and musical partner Sonny Bono.
At the center of the case was not a song, but a sentence — one clause buried in a 1978 divorce settlement that proved powerful enough to withstand federal copyright law itself.
The conflict revolved around royalties from the legendary Sonny & Cher catalog, including era-defining hits like “I Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” When Cher and Sonny finalized their divorce in 1978, they negotiated a clean and equal split: Cher would receive 50% of the royalties generated by the duo’s recordings, indefinitely. That agreement stood unquestioned for decades.
Until it didn’t.
In 2021, Mary Bono — acting as trustee of the Sonny Bono Collection Trust — attempted to invoke a provision of the U.S. Copyright Act that allows authors or their heirs to reclaim transferred copyrights after 35 years. Known as a “termination right,” the law is often used by estates to renegotiate or reclaim valuable catalogs. Bono’s legal team argued that this federal statute overrode Cher’s divorce settlement, effectively nullifying her royalty share.
The court disagreed — emphatically.
U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt ruled that the termination statute was “wholly inapplicable” to Cher’s case. His reasoning was precise and consequential: Cher’s royalty entitlement was not a “grant of copyright,” but a contractual right negotiated during the dissolution of a marriage. Federal copyright law, he concluded, does not have the authority to undo private contractual obligations created under state law.
That distinction changed everything.
As a result of the ruling, the Sonny Bono Trust is now required to pay Cher more than $418,000 in royalties that had been withheld during the dispute — and to continue honoring the original 50/50 split going forward.
Beyond the money, the decision sends shockwaves through the music industry. For decades, termination rights have been viewed as nearly untouchable tools for heirs seeking to reclaim control of lucrative catalogs. This ruling draws a firm boundary: federal copyright law does not automatically supersede divorce settlements or other private contracts, no matter how old they are.
For Cher, the win feels almost poetic. A performer who has reinvented herself across genres, decades, and mediums — from folk-pop star to Oscar-winning actress to dance-pop pioneer — once again proved impossible to erase. Her 1978 paperwork outlasted trends, technologies, and even statutory law.
And for the industry at large, the message is clear: some deals really do stand the test of time.
As Cher herself might put it, the beat doesn’t just go on — it’s legally protected.