For fifteen years, they were the kind of love story sports fans adore — two Slovenian kids who found each other before the fame, the millions, and the blinding lights of the NBA. Now, in March 2026, that story has shattered in the most public way imaginable.
Anamaria Goltes, the longtime partner and fiancée of Los Angeles Lakers superstar Luka Dončić, has taken their two young daughters back to Slovenia and filed a petition for child support in a U.S. court. She has also scrubbed every trace of the NBA star from her Instagram profile — a digital erasure that speaks louder than any press statement ever could.
A Love Story Written in Ljubljana
Luka and Anamaria first crossed paths around 2010 on the Croatian island of Krk. He was twelve. So was she. Both Slovenian, both too young to understand that one of them would become the most gifted basketball player of his generation — and that the weight of that destiny would eventually pull them apart.
They began officially dating in 2016, when Dončić was already making waves as a teenage phenom at Real Madrid. Through his historic Euroleague MVP season, his draft to the Dallas Mavericks, and his rapid ascent to NBA superstardom, Goltes was there. Not as a footnote, but as the constant. The Slovenian model and influencer became a fixture on his social media, at courtside, and in the family portrait that fans projected onto them.
On July 7, 2023, Dončić proposed at Lake Bled — a storybook location for a storybook couple. Their first daughter, Gabriela, arrived on November 30, 2023. A second daughter, Olivia, was born on December 4, 2025. By all outward appearances, the fairytale was holding.
It wasn’t.
The Cracks Nobody Wanted to See
The warning signs arrived quietly, the way they always do when a relationship unravels in front of millions. In May 2024, Goltes relocated to Slovenia with the children — a move that, at the time, could have been explained away as a model wanting her kids closer to family during the grueling NBA season. But the distance became permanent.
Then came the social media signals that the internet reads like tea leaves. Goltes posted a decade-in-review Instagram carousel titled “2016-2026 #part2” — conspicuously, Dončić appeared nowhere in it. Ten years together, distilled into a highlight reel where the man she was supposed to marry didn’t exist.
On March 6, both Dončić and Goltes deleted their engagement photos from Instagram. In 2026, that’s not a private decision. It’s a press conference.
The Legal Filing That Changed Everything
Goltes didn’t just leave. She lawyered up.
The child support petition, filed in a U.S. court, seeks financial support for both Gabriela and Olivia. It does not request custody orders — only child support and attorney fees. But the filing itself is a boundary drawn in legal ink: this is no longer a couple working things out. This is a separation with attorneys involved.
Sources close to the situation told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin that Dončić is now in a custody battle over both daughters. On February 26, the Lakers star filed an interim injunction with Slovenian courts, seeking immediate contact with Gabriela and Olivia — an indication that access to his own children has become a contested legal matter across two countries.
Reports have also surfaced that Goltes called police during a child custody-related incident, though details remain sparse. What’s clear is that the breakup has moved well beyond hurt feelings and into courtroom territory.
Dončić Breaks His Silence
For a player who lets his game do the talking — 43 points in his Lakers debut, 49 against Minnesota, a season-opening stretch that rewrote franchise records — Dončić has been remarkably forthcoming about his personal pain.
“I love my daughters more than anything and I’ve been doing everything I can for them to be with me in the U.S. during the season, but that hasn’t been possible,” Dončić told ESPN. “So I recently made the tough decision to end my engagement.”
Read that again. He says he ended it. Not that they mutually parted ways. Not that the relationship ran its course. He framed it as a decision forced by circumstance — his children an ocean away, his fiancée unwilling or unable to bridge the gap.
“Everything I do is for my daughters’ happiness,” he added.
Whether that narrative holds up under scrutiny is another matter entirely. Rumors have swirled about Dončić being linked to model Madelyn Cline, adding fuel to speculation that the split wasn’t purely about geography and custody logistics.
The Impossible Math of NBA Relationships
There’s a temptation to reduce this to gossip — another celebrity breakup for the content cycle to chew up and spit out. But the Dončić-Goltes split exposes something real about the cost of professional basketball at its highest level.
An NBA season is 82 games spread across seven months, plus playoffs, plus international commitments. Dončić played for Slovenia in EuroBasket 2025 in September, then flew back for Lakers preseason. He missed games in December to fly to Slovenia for Olivia’s birth. The man’s life is a logistical nightmare that no amount of private jets can solve.
When Goltes moved back to Slovenia, she wasn’t just choosing her home country over Los Angeles. She was choosing stability, family support, and a world where her partner’s schedule doesn’t revolve around 48-minute blocks of organized chaos in different cities every other night. For the children — a toddler and a newborn — that calculation makes a certain kind of sense, even if it broke the relationship.
The tragedy is that both sides are probably right. Dončić can’t move to Ljubljana mid-season. Goltes shouldn’t have to raise two children alone in a city where her partner is perpetually on the road. Someone had to lose this argument, and it turns out both of them did.
What Happens Now
Dončić will keep playing. He’s in the middle of the most consequential season of his career — his first in purple and gold, alongside LeBron James, chasing a championship that would cement his legacy. The basketball won’t stop because his personal life is in freefall.
The legal battle, however, is just beginning. A custody dispute that spans the United States and Slovenia involves two different legal systems, two different cultural frameworks for parental rights, and the kind of complexity that takes years to resolve. The child support petition is the opening salvo, not the conclusion.
And Goltes? She’ll rebuild. She was somebody before Luka Dončić, and she’ll be somebody after. But the Instagram purge — deleting every photo of the man she spent a decade with — suggests this isn’t a clean break. Clean breaks don’t require scorched earth.
Fifteen years ago, two twelve-year-olds met on a sun-drenched Croatian island with no idea what was coming. Now they’re 27, fighting over their children in courtrooms on two continents, communicating through lawyers instead of late-night texts. The love story that basketball fans wanted to believe in has become something far more complicated — and far more human — than any of us were ready for.