The war has been longer, and more expensive, than anyone could have expected. Starting with a divorce filing in 2016, it looks certain that hostilities between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will reach the ten-year mark with a court case next year, marking a full decade of legal action.
This cost – financially and emotionally – has been enormous, with some estimating that they may have spent as much as $10 million each on legal fees, and counting.
And yet it still grinds on, with neither side seemingly willing to give in to the other, such is the vitriol between them.
Another low was reached this week when it emerged that Pitt has asked for access to Jolie’s private messages to an associate of a Russian oligarch, which he claims will prove she sold her share of the couple’s former beloved Provencal vineyard, spurred on by nothing but malice.
A source said of the sale this week: ‘This was a full “FU” move from her. The entire deal is Angie being vindictive.’
Indeed, Pitt loathes Russian-born vodka oligarch Yuri Shefler of the Stoli drinks group, the company with whom Jolie struck her deal, with a passion.
Why though, one wonders, even with the funds to pay endless legal teams, would Pitt subject himself to yet more courtroom wrangling – especially after the custody battle over the couple’s six children was so brutal?
It is understood that Pitt does not see any of his older offspring – his three adopted children, Maddox, Pax and Zahara, and his biological daughter Shiloh, 18 – and only has contact with his two youngest biological children, twins Knox and Vivienne, aged 16.
After meeting on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2004, and living together for years, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were married in 2014. The pair are pictured at Cannes Film Festival in 2009
Brad Pitt at Chateau Miraval, the winery he owned with Angelina, in 2023
Maddox, 23 – once so beloved by Pitt that he chose to legally adopt him, even though he had originally been adopted from a Cambodian orphanage by Jolie and her then husband Billy Bob Thornton – is apparently currently ‘running wild’ on the party scene in Los Angeles and New York. He is the apple of his mother’s eye.
Pitt, according to court documents, called him a ‘f***ing Columbine kid’ in a reference to the tragic school shooting, indicating his worries over the way Maddox had been brought up. Indeed, on that fateful private jet flight in 2016 which saw their marriage implode, when an inebriated Pitt was allegedly verbally and physically abusive with his family, he is said to have accused his wife of ‘ruining’ the family because of the way she was raising Maddox.
Meanwhile, Maddox is said to openly detest Pitt.
Next comes Pax, 21, who called Brad a ‘terrible person’ in a heartfelt rant on social media in 2016. He added: ‘You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children who tremble in fear when in your presence. You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you’re incapable of doing so.’
Then there’s Zahara, 20, a student, who has made her feelings about her adoptive father clear by dropping the Pitt from her Jolie-Pitt surname. He used to dote on her and call her ‘Zee’.
Daughter Shiloh filed documentation to ditch the Pitt name at the very earliest point possible, on her 18th birthday, which made a point. Only a few months prior to that Pitt had been asked about his daughter, a talented dancer, on a red carpet and spoke tenderly about the pride which ‘Mr Two Left Feet here’ felt in her achievements.
Daughter Vivienne also used the name Jolie, not Pitt, in a recent credit in a theatre programme.
Sources in the Pitt camp blame ‘textbook parental alienation’ by Angelina Jolie for this state of affairs.
Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their six children Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne
In such a position, others might consider it best to calm troubled waters by cutting your losses, rather than adding yet more oil to the flames with another bad-tempered courtroom battle.
But Pitt feels very differently.
Indeed, it can be revealed that the children, and his hopes for a future relationship with them, are the reason he’s continuing with his legal fight – at least, that’s according to Pitt.
At the heart of it all is Pitt and Jolie’s former French hideaway, Chateau Miraval, which produces an award-winning rosé wine.
More than just being a profitable business though, the Chateau is something of an emotional ground-zero for both Pitt and Jolie. After meeting on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2004, and living together for years, it was here that they were married in 2014. It was here they had some of the happiest times raising their children.
Yet just 25 months after their nuptials, they split after that fight on a private plane.
In legal documents, Jolie said Pitt hit and choked the children as well as attacking her, and punched the roof of the plane when drunk. At one point, it was claimed, he poured beer on his wife, while he also poured beer and red wine on the children.
Pitt’s side have always denied any physical violence and said Jolie kept on ‘revising and rehashing’ her version of events.
The incident was investigated, but he was never charged.
In the aftermath, Jolie announced the couple were separating and she was seeking a divorce ‘for the health of the family,’ Her manager, Geyer Kosinski said: ‘Angelina will always do what is in the best interest to protect her children.’
Divorce proceedings lasted for eight exhausting years, with a settlement finally reached in December 2024.
But litigation over the Chateau Miraval wine business continues.
It is understood that Pitt, pictured at the premiere of F1: The Movie last month, does not see any of his older offspring – his three adopted children, Maddox, Pax and Zahara, and his biological daughter Shiloh, 18 – and only has contact with his two youngest biological children, twins Knox and Vivienne, aged 16
The couple had owned it jointly and Pitt says there was always an agreement neither would sell their share without the other’s approval.
However, Jolie sold her share in the business to the Stoli group – with Pitt unaware this had even happened until it was announced in the wine business press.
Why would she deliver this devastating blow to Pitt?
Sources now contend that the sale was prompted by Jolie’s emotional reaction to one of the many twists in the fight over custody of the children.
They say Jolie sold Miraval in the immediate aftermath of a legal ruling in 2021 which gave Pitt 50/50 custody of their children. He had fought for five years to get to that point and by the time it came, Maddox was already too old to fall within its scope.
The ruling was overturned quickly by Jolie on appeal. But not – say Pitt’s friends – before she had delivered a kick to his teeth by selling her share of his beloved business.
A source said this week: ‘Four years ago the judge ruled that Brad should get 50/50 custody. He won that initial agreement based on merit. There were 160 pages of reports and the judge felt her testimony had been in part unreliable.
‘Then, a few weeks after this, Angelina sold her share of Miraval to Stoli.
‘The whole issue started right after he got the custody agreement. She knew Brad didn’t want to sell to them. They had approached them before about buying into the business and it had been a no, so this was a full ‘F U’ move from her. The entire deal is Angie being vindictive.’
(Jolie’s side did not comment this week but have previously denied she knew about a prior approach to Pitt from Stoli.)
So Jolie came out on top on both counts – eventually awarded primary physical custody of the children, with Pitt left with visitation rights only over twins Knox and Vivienne and selling her half of the couple’s emotional lodestone for $56million to a man Pitt hated.
The man in question is Yuri Shefler of Stoli and Pitt is utterly enraged he is in business with him because of Jolie’s actions.
Shefler has mocked him as ‘an actor, not a winemaker’ and in court filings painted him as a Hollywood dilettante, incapable of running a business. His legal team claimed that Pitt had squandered millions on swimming pool renovations. ‘He deals in illusions, not dirt and grapes,’ they said.
Shefler was officially designated by the US Treasury as an oligarch in 2018 and sources close to the actor say that he regards the man as a bully he doesn’t want to do business with. ‘These guys are bottom feeders,’ says a source in the Pitt camp. Shefler is outlawed and sanctioned by Putin’s Russia and has spoken of his sympathy for Ukraine, and has also previously resisted attempts by Putin to renationalise the vodka brand.
Pitt’s first lawsuit over the vineyard sale came in February 2022, and Jolie responded to Pitt’s filing with a countersuit in September that same year, claiming he’s been ‘waging a vindictive war against’ her since she filed for divorce in 2016.
The latest salvo in that war saw Pitt this week ask for Jolie’s private communications with the Stoli Group’s Alexey Oliynik, who he claims has first-hand knowledge of Jolie’s sale.
In legal papers, filed on June 30, he seeks to depose Oliynik, who works for the Stoli group.
Pitt’s new document, which was filed in the Superior Court of California, says that Oliynik has refused to turn over relevant documents or appear for a deposition, arguing that he could not be forced to do so as a resident of Switzerland.
Just 25 months after their nuptials Angelina and Brad, seen at the Oscars in 2014, separated
His lawyers say: ‘These requests go directly to key allegations about Pitt’s objections to the sale, and easily meet the standard for discoverability given Pitt’s allegations that Jolie acted with malice in selling to Stoli, a counterparty she knew Pitt opposed.’
But Jolie’s legal team has said in court documents that Pitt refused to buy her out of the winery business because she didn’t want to sign a non-disclosure agreement ‘designed to force her silence about his abuse and cover-up’, referring to the 2016 private jet flight.
However, in May 2024, a judge ruled that Jolie herself must produce eight years’ worth of non-disclosure agreements in an attempt to illustrate that she too used the kind of NDAs that she objected to signing in 2021.
Jolie called upon Pitt to drop the legal action last year when they finally settled their divorce.
A source said: ‘Sadly, until he drops his lawsuit, this family will not have the peace and healing they so very much desire and deserve.’
But Pitt is determined, having come this far, to see the matter right through to trial in 2026.
A source said: ‘This will be going to trial next year. The situation now is that Brad does have control of the business as Angelina’s share was deemed to be 40 per cent. She tried to get it dismissed but that hasn’t happened.’
You may wonder why Pitt – a recovering alcoholic who recently opened up about going to AA meetings in the wake of his divorce – would want to hang on to the booze business in the first place?
I’m told: ‘It is more than an alcohol business. There is a skincare business based there and a music recording studio too, and it is a beautiful property. Also, it is about the legacy which he wants to leave for his children. The business is that legacy.’
But for now, unless of course you are one of the lawyers involved, it feels as if their chateau has yielded only the bitterest harvest.
