Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt divorce: Why did it take so long?

Actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt pose for photographers in black tuxedos

By Nardine SaadStaff Writer

Dec. 31, 2024 Updated 2:51 PM PT

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have finally reached a divorce settlement more than eight years after announcing the end of their two-year marriage back in 2016.

The fellow Oscar winners and former Hollywood power couple, who were together for 12 years before their split, signed off on a default declaration filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday. The document said they have entered into a written agreement on their marital and property rights, according to records obtained Tuesday by The Times, and that they gave up the right to any future spousal financial support. A judge still needs to sign off on the agreement.

The high-profile split — among the longest and most contentious splits in Hollywood history — has been years in the making and four times as long as their marriage.

“More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr. Pitt. 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,” her attorney James Simon said Tuesday in a statement to The Times.

“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,” said Simon, of Hersh Mannis LLP.

Representatives for Pitt declined to comment Tuesday when reached by The Times.

Jolie, who is currently in the Oscar running for the Maria Callas biopic “Maria,” does not speak ill of her ex privately or publicly and she’s “been trying hard to be light after a dark time,” a person close to Jolie who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter told The Times.

“The kids have grown up seeing that some people have so much power and privilege that their voices don’t matter,” the person said. “Their pain doesn’t count. They have wanted her to speak up for herself, to defend herself over these years but she reminds them to focus on changing laws over telling public stories.”

People, which was first to report on the settlement late Monday, cited a source close to Jolie who said that Jolie hopes Pitt can now “move on” and “stop attacking her.” The source accused Pitt of wielding power and privilege to “cover up his conduct at his family’s expense, to punish Angelina for leaving, and even to attempt to paint her as the reason why his relationship is so challenging with the children.”

But a person close to Pitt rejected that framing, People reported, and said that Jolie had been the one who for years engaged in “one-sided attacks,” including “a never-ending distortion of facts and projecting their own behavior onto others, causing tremendous collateral damage.”

Jolie, 49, and Pitt, 61, used a private judge — an increasingly common practice among estranged celebrity couples — to settle the divorce. That strategy has allowed them to keep the details of their split out of the public eye, for the most part. No official court action in their case has occurred since last February.

Jolie and the “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” Oscar winner met while working on the 2005 action film “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” when Pitt was still married to “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston and after Jolie had already adopted two children. The pair welcomed their first child together, daughter Shiloh, in Namibia in 2006. A few years and a few more kids later, the pair decided to get married at the behest of their six children. The two legally wed Aug. 14, 2014, after a two-year engagement and celebrated the marriage on Aug. 23 of that year with a nondenominational ceremony held at their chateau and winery in Provence.

Then the “Girl, Interrupted” Oscar winner abruptly filed for divorce from Pitt on Sept. 19, 2016, days after they allegedly had a physical altercation on a private plane flight home from Europe. Several of the actors’ children were also allegedly involved in the incident, according to an FBI report. After investigations, Pitt was not charged by authorities.

Jolie cited irreconcilable differences in her petition for dissolution and listed the date of separation as Sept. 15, 2016. She requested sole physical custody and joint legal custody of their six children but indicated she was willing to give her husband visitation rights.

Since that filing, four of their children have become adults, negating the need for a custody agreement for them. The former couple still share two minor children, 16-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. In August, daughter Shiloh, who submitted a petition to remove her father’s surname from hers in May, filed a decree asking the court to officially recognize the change. She is now legally known as Shiloh Nouvel Jolie instead of by her birth name, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt.

The strained divorce negotiations and fiery counterclaims played out for months until the pair released a joint statement in 2017 saying that they had agreed to handle the divorce privately and would use a private judge to settle the matter. They had the divorce bifurcated, separating the marriage itself from other contentious issues in the split such as child custody and splitting of assets, and were declared legally single in 2019.

However, in 2019 Jolie filed to have an earlier private judge, John W. Ouderkirk, removed from the case after Ouderkirk reached a decision that included equal custody of their children. Jolie alleged that he had an unreported conflict of interest, arguing that he was too late and not forthcoming enough about other cases he was hired for involving Pitt’s attorney Anne C. Kiley. An appeals court upheld the decision to disqualify him from the case in 2020, resulting in the removal of that judge and the couple starting the proceedings over.

In 2022, more details about the family’s 2016 private plane confrontation emerged in a lawsuit that Jolie filed against the FBI. The alleged incident was also brought up during Jolie and Pitt’s protracted battle over Chateau Miraval, their winemaking estate and family home in the south of France that also served as the site of their 2014 wedding celebration.

Pitt’s legal team claimed that Jolie “vindictively” sold her stake in the winery without his agreement and alleged that she “sought to inflict harm on Pitt,” subsequently revealing more details about the unraveling of their relationship. Jolie’s attorney in that lawsuit has since accused Pitt of “unrelenting efforts to control and financially drain” Jolie, as well as “attempting to hide his history of abuse, control, and coverup.” Pitt’s team has denied those allegations.

The Miraval lawsuit is ongoing. It’s unclear how or if the divorce settlement will affect it.

This is the second divorce for Pitt and the third for Jolie, who is the daughter of actor Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, who died in 2007 after battling breast and ovarian cancer and whose health struggle prompted Jolie to get a preventative double mastectomy in 2013. Jolie was previously wed to English actor Jonny Lee Miller from 1996 to 2000 and to “Landman” actor Billy Bob Thornton from 2000 to 2003.

Pitt was married to Aniston from 2000 to 2005.

Times staff writer Christie D’Zurilla and the Associated Press contributed to this report.