Why Aren’t Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Divorced Yet?
Untangling the sticky and wildly expensive legal mess that has kept these two exes in both the courtroom and the tabloids for eight years.
On August 14, 2014, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got married in a small ceremony in the chapel on the grounds of their French winery, Chateau Miraval. Just over two years later, on a private flight from Miraval back to Los Angeles, Pitt allegedly had a physical confrontation with Jolie in front of their six children, prompting her to file for divorce. Eight years later, that divorce is still not over.
Marriages between high-profile and ultrahigh-net-worth individuals can take time to unwind: There are usually shared businesses, multiple real-estate investments, and Swiss bank accounts to divvy up. But the Brangelina divorce has been a marathon even by these standards. Pitt and Jolie have gone back and forth about custody, real estate, and, of course, Chateau Miraval for years — often leaking their respective “wins” to the tabloids. What is the endgame? And why is it taking so long to get there?
The bifurcated judgment
One of the biggest possible reasons this proceeding has dragged on so long is because technically, Jolie and Pitt are already divorced. In 2019, a judge declared the two legally single in what’s known as a bifurcated judgment, meaning they are free to marry other people as they continue to argue over their finances, custody, and all other matters related to the divorce. In California, couples can get a bifurcated divorce for almost any reason, which takes away some of the motivation to finalize things in a timely manner, explains Sophie Jacobi-Parisi, a partner in the matrimonial and family-law practice at Blank Rome who is not affiliated with the case. “I feel like there are a lot of divorces I would never have gotten done” without that incentive, she says, noting that she practices in New York and Connecticut, where bifurcated judgments are typically not allowed.
Pitt, for instance, could go ahead and marry his alleged 30-something girlfriend, Ines de Ramon, and keep fighting about Miraval for years to come (Pitt and de Ramon were just photographed strolling on the beach in Santa Barbara together in what looked to be a pap setup meant to telegraph their seriousness as a couple).
Private judge drama
Another unusual element of this case revolves around Los Angeles Judge John W. Ouderkirk, a retired judge who Jolie and Pitt hired (likely at great expense) to rule on custody for the ex-couple’s six children. In 2021, Ouderkirk decided Jolie and Pitt should have 50-50 custody. Jolie then successfully appealed to have the judge’s decision vacated — the Second District Court of Appeals ruled that Ouderkirk should be disqualified for failing to sufficiently disclose business dealings with Pitt’s attorneys. Jolie claimed the judge was biased and refused to allow her children to testify about the domestic violence they allegedly endured from Pitt. Once Ouderkirk was disqualified and his decision vacated, Pitt and Jolie essentially had to start back at square one with the custody case.
“The procedure throughout this case is part of the reason why it’s gone on for so long, because going up and down on appeal and getting things set aside” takes a lot of time, said Kara Chrobak, a shareholder in Buchalter Law Firm’s Denver office and a member of the firm’s family-law group who is also not associated with the case. Hiring a private judge and then having his decisions vacated is “not common at all,” she said.
Abuse allegations and a never-ending custody battle
Another reason the divorce has carried on is that neither side has been willing to budge on custody. Jolie has maintained since she filed for divorce in 2016 that Pitt was abusive to her and the children on the private flight from France to California, and that she separated from Pitt to protect their health and safety. As such, her attorneys have argued she should have full custody, while Pitt has pushed for joint custody. Since the documents related to the custody case are sealed, the only details we know about the decisions there come from what both sides have leaked to the tabloids. But the process has taken long enough that most of the Jolie-Pitt kids are now at an age where they can make decisions about which parent they’d like to live with and spend time with themselves.
“When you have teenage children, especially when you get to the age that they can drive, they’re sufficiently mature to really make their own choices with respect to who they want to be spending time with,” said Chrobak. “It’s very common that once kids reach driving ages, there are not going to be significant custody fights because the kids are going to do what they want to do anyway.”
This appears to be the case with Jolie and Pitt: A source close to Pitt told Us Weekly in March that Jolie has been granted primary custody of the couple’s minor children (Shiloh, who turns 18 at the end of this month, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 15). Pitt “isn’t thrilled” with the decision, the source said, but he’s not fighting it. “He wishes [his relationship with the kids] was stronger and wants to work on that.”
“It’s been very stressful for him to have to defend over and over again,” another source close to Pitt told People. “But since things don’t seem to change, he’s trying to move on with his life.”
Jolie, meanwhile, continues to advocate for changes to the family-court system in the wake of this experience. In the fall, she reportedly sent a letter to California governor Gavin Newsom asking him to support Piqui’s Law, legislation that would require domestic-abuse training for judges.
“This is personal to her, and for good reason,” a source close to Jolie told the New York Post at the time. “Look at what she faced from a biased judge who was removed by the appellate court for his corrupt and secretive financial dealings with Brad Pitt’s team that violated judicial ethics in her family’s case, and who refused to review evidence of domestic abuse. It’s no surprise she has taken on this specific issue. Their whole family is a victim of system failure. She has been fighting privately for her family and publicly for other families for years.”
The Miraval of it all
Jolie and Pitt’s dispute over the sale of Chateau Miraval is technically a separate filing, but it has become inextricable from the personal issues that led to the divorce. Typically, divorcing couples try to resolve issues related to shared businesses as quickly and quietly as possible, Chrobak said, in order to maintain the value of those businesses for the benefit of both parties. This has not been the case with Jolie and Pitt. “It seems like they’re using the business dispute as a way to disseminate to the public certain aspects of their divorce to get what they each perceive to be a leg up on the divorce case,” she said. “This is unique.”
Initially, Jolie and Pitt worked out a deal where Jolie would sell her shares in Miraval to Pitt. But she claims Pitt asked her to sign an “onerous” NDA as part of the sale, “covering Pitt’s personal misconduct, whether related to Miraval or not.” She claims this was Pitt’s attempt to silence her about the abuse allegations and that his request caused the deal to fall through. Jolie then sold her shares to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of Stoli, in 2021.
Pitt has sued to block the sale and claims Jolie “vindictively” sold to Tenute del Mondo after Judge Ouderkirk ruled the ex-couple should have 50-50 custody of the children. The case is ongoing, with the next hearing scheduled for May 16. Pitt’s attorneys have asked Jolie to submit previous NDAs she has entered into in order to prove that Pitt’s request was not abnormal. Jolie’s attorneys argue the request is not relevant to the case. “Forcing Jolie to spend the time and expense of gathering and producing all of this documentation is expensive, wasteful, and unreasonable — and the latest manifestation of Pitt’s abusive conduct toward Jolie. The Court should not allow it,” the attorneys said in a filing last month.
The expense
Perhaps you are wondering this: So how much is all this costing these people? The answer: too much. “I’m totally speculating, but what we know is that they had a private judge who did a whole custody trial,” said Jacobi-Parisi, adding up the various expenses. “They’ve had multiple experts related to the custody case. They’ve had multiple lawyers — I think each of them has had at least two to three, maybe more lawyers, and every time you change lawyers, it increases the cost. And then this whole Miraval filing is an added cost.”
“I think all in, it’s probably between $8 and $10 million,” she said. Chrobak estimated even higher, estimating the total cost to be in the tens of millions.
All for the good of … the winery where this cursed union began? I guess we shall see.
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