Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt reach divorce settlement after eight years
More than eight years since separating, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement, as ITV News' Charlotte Cross reports
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement, eight years after they separated, her lawyer has said.
The apparent agreement, first reported in People magazine, brings an end to one of the longest and most contentious divorces in Hollywood history.
“More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr Pitt,” James Simon said in a statement to The Associated Press.
“She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family. This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago.
"Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”
No court documents have yet been filed, and a judge will need to sign off the agreement.
Ms Jolie, 49, and Mr Pitt, 61, were among Hollywood’s most prominent pairings for 12 years, two of them as a married couple. The Oscar winners have six children together.
Ms Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, after a private jet flight from Europe during which she said Mr Pitt was abusive towards her and their children.
An investigation by the FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services deemed no action needed to be taken against Mr Pitt.
A judge in 2019 declared them divorced and single, but the splitting of assets and child custody needed to be separately settled.
Soon after, a private judge hired by the actors to handle the case reached a decision that included equal custody of their children, but Ms Jolie filed to have him removed from the case over an unreported conflict of interest. An appeals court agreed, the judge was removed, and the couple had to start the process over.
During the long divorce fight, four of the couple's six children became adults, negating the need for a custody agreement for them. The only two that remain minors are 16-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. In June, one of their daughters, then known as Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, successfully petitioned to remove Pitt's name from hers.
Their other children are 23-year-old Maddox, 21-year-old Pax and 19-year-old Zahara.
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No details of the agreement were immediately revealed, and the couple's use of the private judge — an increasingly common move among splitting celebrities in recent years — has kept the proceedings largely under wraps.
One detail that did emerge was a separate lawsuit filed by Mr Pitt in which he alleged Ms Jolie reneged on an agreement that she would sell him her half of a French winery the two owned together.
Ms Jolie instead sold her part of the winery, Chateau Miraval, to the Tenute del Mondo wine group, a subsidiary of the Stoli Group, which Mr Pitt said was a “vindictive” move that ruined a private space that had been a second home.
Publicly, both Mr Pitt and Ms Jolie have been extremely tight-lipped on everything surrounding their split, despite robust promotional tours and many media appearances for various projects.
Pitt said in a 2017 interview with GQ that he had had a drinking problem at the time of the plane incident and the split, but had since become sober and was going to therapy. J
Both Jolie and Pitt were among the most elite stars in film when they began dating in 2004, after co-starring as hitman-and-hitwoman spouses in Mr and Mrs Smith.
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