So it looks like the messy saga of the Gosselin family is getting even messier after the end of Jon & Kate Plus 8. Collin Gosselin, one of the sextuplets, recently took to TikTok to post an emotional message about feeling estranged from his siblings, and he seems to be putting the blame squarely on his mother, Kate. It’s an intense and very public development, and it’s led to Kate’s own indirect response on social media, all while she’s back working as a nurse because of financial issues.
Collin’s post from was a real gut-punch. It started with a throwback photo of him and his siblings, with the words “Born to be a team, us against the world…” The next image was a picture of him driving alone with a caption that said, “Forced to do it alone, and wonder every day what our lives could’ve looked like.”
The text in the video continued with him talking about how they were “forced apart, pitted against each other,” suggesting their lives were just way too complicated by fame and money for them to just be kids. In the caption, he wrote about how much he still loves his twin sisters Madelyn and Cara, 24, and his fellow sextuplets Alexis, Leah, Hannah, Aaden, and Joel, 21, and that he gets emotional just thinking about the memories they could have had together.
Sad times for the Jon & Kate Plus 8 family
Naturally, the post blew up and everyone was talking about it. That prompted Kate Gosselin to respond, but in a very Kate kind of way, i.e., indirectly. A follower posted a screenshot of Collin’s TikTok in the comments of her own video while she was loading her dishwasher, and Kate’s reply was short and to the point: “He knows why…”. That single, terse sentence is the first time Kate has publicly acknowledged Collin’s post, and it definitely hints that there’s a lot more to this story than we’re seeing.
Adding another layer to all this, Kate has recently gone back to nursing, which she says is due to money problems. She mentioned that she was “drug into court constantly” after her 2009 divorce from Jon, which resulted in a ton of legal fees. She responded to a fan’s question about her return to nursing, saying, “Sad bc my kids could have a lot more saved and I could have a retirement saved if it weren’t for lawyers :(” It’s pretty clear the financial fallout from the divorce is still an issue all these years later.
Kate Gosselin shared several throwback photos of her eight kids from the “good old days”, just hours after her son Collin Gosselin detailed being “forced apart” from his siblings in an emotional message. https://t.co/dHJfk1eel2 pic.twitter.com/WqCJ0uZQ9a
— E! News (@enews) August 12, 2025
For anyone who’s been following this drama, you know it goes way back. The family has been in conflict ever since Jon and Kate’s divorce and the end of their reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8. After the divorce, Kate got full custody of all eight kids and continued the show as Kate Plus 8. Things got even more strained back in 2016 when Collin was sent to the Fairmount Behavioral Health Institute. This was a mental institution that he was sent to at age 12 for what Kate called “behavioral issues.”
During that time, Collin claims Kate “came to visit me once” for 30 minutes. “The entire time all she did was lecture me and tell me that I destroyed our family. Our family was under a spotlight 24… I know strongly that the reason I was sent away was for my mother to protect her reputation.”
After two years there, Collin reached out to his dad, Jon, who was eventually granted sole physical custody of him. This was one of those expensive battles for Jon to be able to get Collin out of that institution. Hannah also went to live with Jon, which created a big rift in the family, with the other children seemingly staying on Kate’s side. Jon has claimed that Kate “institutionalized [Collin] without a diagnosis and then created a diagnosis,” and that he “did not need to be in an institution.”
