It’s been a decade since Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from her fellow Hollywood A-lister Brad Pitt in 2016.
A bitter battle followed that stretched out for eight long years. Indeed, their divorce was not finalized until December of 2024. To this day, Jolie and Pitt are still battling each other in court over their French vineyard, Château Miraval.
Now, Jolie is sending a brutal message to Pitt by refusing a major request of his in court. This comes as their bitter legal battle over this winery continues to escalate.
Jolie Fights To Refuse Pitt’s Request
Jolie is fighting back against Pitt’s latest effort to obtain years of her financial records. In a new filing in Los Angeles Superior Court, Jolie asked a judge not to force her to turn over tax returns and other financial records dating back to 2017.
This came days after People Magazine obtained a filing in which Pitt, 62, asked Jolie, 51, to “produce documents sufficient to show her income and profit participation payments” from 2017 through 2019.
“Jolie has made her alleged financial vulnerability central to her case,” Pitt’s filing read.
Jolie’s lawyers fired back by claiming that Pitt was incorrectly portraying her as having claimed she was in financial distress. Instead, they argued that her legal filings described her efforts to separate her finances from her ex-husband,
“The issue is not whether Jolie needed the money — the issue is that she was trying to untangle her life and her finances from her controlling and abusive ex-husband,” Jolie’s filing stated. “That distinction makes all the difference.”
Pitt Hurls Accusation At Jolie
Pitt had claimed that Jolie made her financial condition relevant to the case by alleging she wanted “financial independence.” He added that she had “concluded that she needed to sell her interest in Chateau Miraval” to achieve it.
Jolie’s attorneys, however, argued in their filing filing that she “has never alleged that she was in financial distress.”
“Her allegations are clear that she sought to untangle her financial life from the ex-spouse she was divorcing,” Jolie’s filing continued.
In his filing, Pitt had accused Jolie of having “repeatedly placed at issue the financial distress and susceptibility to economic pressure she allegedly faced following her separation from Pitt in 2016. Yet there is substantial reason to doubt this allegation.”
Pitt’s filing went on to claim that “Jolie was, during the relevant period, one of Hollywood’s most prominent and highly compensated actresses, with income streams from major studio projects and profit-participation rights.”
It then said that “during and around the relevant period, Jolie starred in, committed to star in, or received compensation from major commercial films, including Disney’s Maleficent franchise and Marvel’s Eternals. Jolie’s Maleficent films grossed well over $1 billion worldwide, and Eternals grossed approximately $402.1 million worldwide.”
Jolie’s Claims In Her Own Filing
Jolie had argued in her own filing that she had already turned over her tax returns and profit participation statements for 2020 and 2021. She did this even though her lawyers had insisted that she was not required to do so. They argued that forcing the actress to produce records from 2017 through 2019 would amount to “a serious invasion of Jolie’s privacy rights.”
Jolie’s attorneys then alleged that Pitt’s request relied on “selective quotes and inaccurate paraphrasing,” rather than what Jolie actually alleged in previous court filings.
“Discovery motion practice should be grounded in what actually appears in the pleadings, not on re-characterizations designed to grab headlines but that have no basis in reality,” Jolie’s filing argued
Pitt’s lawyers hit back by claiming that “Jolie has made her financial condition central to her cross-claim and defense. She cannot now use her alleged financial vulnerability as a sword while simultaneously invoking privacy interests as a shield against scrutiny.”
Jolie And Pitt’s History
Jolie and Pitt met on the set of the 2005 movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith. At the time, Pitt was still married to the former Friends star Jennifer Aniston. They soon split and he immediately began dating Jolie.
Pitt and Jolie went on to marry in 2014 in a ceremony at their winery in rural France. Jolie then filed for divorce just over two years later in 2016. She filed for divorce days after an alleged altercation on a private jet flight. There, Jolie alleges that Pitt was abusive to her and their six children. It is believed that most, if not all, of the children are estranged from Pitt to this day.
Jolie And Pitt’s Ongoing Legal Battle
A decade after their split, Jolie and Pitt are still fighting it out in court over Château Miraval.
Last week, Pitt scored a huge win in this legal battle when a California Superior Court granted Pitt’s motion to compel depositions from members of the Stoli Group. This came after Pitt’s lawyers argued that the spirits-and-wine giant had direct knowledge of Jolie’s 2021 sale of Château Miraval to Tenute del Mondo, the Stoli Group’s wine division.
Jolie’s legal team fired back by telling People Magazine that the rulings “have made no impact on the merits of the case, and certainly has no impact on Ms. Jolie’s case.”
“At this point, Ms. Jolie is just looking forward to defeating the case at trial next year so that their family can finally focus their energies on healing and moving on,” Jolie’s attorneys added.
This has clearly been one of the messiest celebrity divorces of all time. Given how many messy celebrity splits there have been over the years, that’s saying a lot!
Jolie and Pitt’s latest court filings certainly indicate that their bitter legal battle over their vineyard won’t be ending anytime soon. That’s deeply unfortunate, as it seems that neither one of them will be able to move on with their respective lives as long as this court battle remains ongoing.
Here’s hoping that Jolie and Pitt can find some way to put this behind them in the near future, because this has gone on for far too long. Only time will tell if they will ever be able to do that, but as of now, it seems that there is no end to this in sight. Sad!