"Octomom" files for bankruptcy, owes $30K in rent, up to $1M in debt

"Octomom" Nadya Suleman poses for photographers in front of her home in La Habra, Calif. on May 19, 2010.

/ Getty

(CBS/AP)  Nadya Suleman filed for bankruptcy Monday, saying in a court filing that she has as much as $1 million in debt.

Suleman, dubbed Octomom by the media,  wants a fresh start and said in a statement that filing for bankruptcy is what's best for her children, according to the Orange County Register.

Read more: Octomom investigated by social services

"I have had to make some very difficult decisions this year, and filing Chapter 7 was one of them," Suleman said.

She told HLN, "I don't think you can get farther, deeper down into the rock bottom than we are at this point."

The mother of 14 reports up to $50,000 in assets in federal court filings, which means she owes more than 20 times her net worth.

Among others, Suleman owes money to her father, the city's water department, DirecTV, Sylvan Learning Center and Whittier Christian School, where at least some of her children are students.

Suleman also owes more than $30,000 in rent payments on her four-bedroom house.

Suleman was in financial dire straits before the January 2009 birth of her octuplets brought her notoriety. She lived with her mother in a three-bedroom house in Whittier that was in foreclosure proceedings at the time of the octuplets' birth.

The unemployed single mother had been supporting her six other children with the aid of food stamps and Social Security disability payments - sources of income that she continues to rely on.

Since the birth, she has cut deals with media outlets and posed in tabloid photo spreads to get by, touting a book and exercise videos that never materialized.

In 2009, Suleman declined a million-dollar offer to appear in pornography. Last month, semi-nude photos of Suleman ran alongside a paid interview in a British publication - a photo spread she defended in the tabloids, saying she wasn't ashamed of it.

[steeleBear]

She should be denied Ch. 7 and forced to Ch. 13 where she gets a restructuring but still has to pay. This is another example of working the system.

[Chrismh1971]

It sounds like she spends $520 of her $2,000 welfare money she earns each month on a Brazilian chemical straightening treatment for her hair while her kids were locked in the bedroom. That is another story on her.

[Molly-Pchr]

This is a tragic example of what happens to the people used up by the reality TV crowd. It's almost as bad as what happens to child stars after the studio(s) are done with them and they're thrown out with the trash.

[WillHirsch]

Sucks to be the kid who is a student at the city's water department

[vsmit]

The social safety net is so important here in America. So a crazy woman can have 14 kids and not have to work. Glad my tax dollars are going to such a good cause.

[Resin-Smoker]

Worthless individual... I'd be happy at her decline if not for the fact that this hurts the childeren under her care. She should be declaired "unfit" and the childeren become wards of the state.

[---rynochaser---]

Good, the US should export her and the kardashian klan.