$280,000 gross. Roughly $180,000 in net profit. That is what Sarper Güven’s stand-up comedy business made, according to the joint federal tax return Shekinah Garner cited in her latest divorce filing — the first hard number anyone has put on the punchlines.
The figures surfaced in court documents obtained by TMZ and reported on November 8 and 9, and they landed inside an already bitter split. Shekinah is asking a judge to order spousal support — the $6,189-a-month request we covered earlier this week — plus $35,000 toward her attorney’s fees. No ruling on any of it has been reported.
From Open Mics to 150 Sold-Out Rooms
The number is big because the tour is big. Venue listings bill Sarper as a headliner with more than 150 shows across 40-plus states in the U.S. and Canada, performing 90-minute sets of original material he calls “Sarperism.” His Canada run sold out three Hamilton shows in one day in September, and tour listings show 40 dates booked from November 12 through March 30, 2027. Tickets typically run $35 to $69 a seat. He picked America over Turkey as his home base, so the tour is where the money lives now.
He has also turned the stage into a fundraiser. Earlier this year he staged New York shows for fellow 90 Day star Jenny Slatten after her ALS diagnosis, with Sarper saying 225 tickets had already sold.
The Jokes Were About Her — and She Knows It
Here is the twist: the act itself was built on the marriage. Shekinah has said Sarper used intimate details of their relationship — including their sex life — as stand-up material in front of live audiences. Sarper has pushed back, saying he has already cut almost everything about her from the routine, leaving two or three jokes — the lips tattoo, her sisters’ trip to Turkey — and that he plans to drop those too. Fans at his shows have reported hearing tell-all spoilers, and his single-era night in Tulsa only fed the sense that the marriage was already over while the tour rolled on.
Her Side of the Ledger: Two Years of Closed Doors
Shekinah’s filing says the $180,000 did not appear out of nowhere. She flew to Turkey every two months for two years before Sarper got his U.S. visa, staying about three weeks each time, and closed her Los Angeles facial studio while she was gone. Her business, she says, ended that stretch with a net loss of about $51,000. Her case in one sentence: his business grew while hers went dark — and she wants the court to price the darkness.
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The comedy money has never been clean profit. Sarper has faced a lawsuit from Hypomania Productions, which sued him for breach of contract after canceled shows — a case reported at $35,000, with later reports suggesting the claim could reach $100,000. And when fan pages claimed he was moving tour money to Turkey to keep it from Shekinah, Sarper answered on Instagram with a joke of his own: forget seven figures in a year, he said — he made “billions.” The quip landed as comedy. The tax return landed as evidence.
The fight is no longer about whether Sarper can make a living telling jokes. It is about who paid for the career that pays him. If you were the judge, how much of that $180,000 would you say belongs to Shekinah Garner — all of the support she asked for, a smaller share, or nothing at all?
