Court papers reveal Brad and Angelina’s toxic divorce could go on longer than their marriage (and has cost $5million already)
- The drawn-out divorce is the most bitter and petty in Hollywood history
- No agreement is in sight and nitpicking over the details won’t be resolved soon
- They are arguing over whose idea it was to divorce in two parts
- Friend of Brad claims she still loves him and is angry he wants her out of his life
Their six children — biological and adopted — have always been at the centre of their lives.
Who can forget that they were allowed to customise their mother’s Versace wedding veil with the sort of doodles most parents confine to the fridge door.
Then there were their parents’ repeated pronouncements about the wedding in August 2014 being largely motivated by a desire to make their much-loved brood happy.Brad Pitt and Angelina
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in what has surely become the most bitter and petty divorce in Hollywood history
‘It’s a wonderful feeling to be married,’ said Angelina Jolie in a brief, strangely detached, statement to Hello! magazine to mark the event. ‘The children are so happy.’
Brad Pitt echoed her sentiments. ‘We didn’t realise how much it meant to them,’ he observed.
Quite what their short-lived union has meant to the bride or groom, however, becomes less clear by the day.
For almost two years, ever since Angelina made the shock announcement in September 2016 that she was filing for divorce, the superstar couple have been in the process of ending their marriage in what has surely become the most bitter and petty divorce in Hollywood history.
If the nitpicking grinds on for much longer, the Pitts will have been divorcing for longer than they were married.
If the nitpicking grinds on for much longer, the Pitts will have been divorcing for longer than they were married
And, despite the fact that legal costs already stand at £4 million between them, there is still no sign of an agreement.
One source close to the divorce told me this week that he has no expectation that the impasse will be resolved any time soon.
Why? ‘They cannot agree on anything,’ he told me.
The main bone of contention surrounds the thorny issue of how they will co-parent the children — Maddox, 17, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 12, and ten-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne — with Angelina desperate to engineer full custody for herself.
As recently as June this year, Angelina was warned that she could lose custody if she didn’t give Brad the children’s mobile phone numbers and allow them to speak to him unsupervised, and promote a healthy relationship with him.
A source said: ‘It seems that she has been alienating the children from him. First she thought that she could embarrass him into giving up the children. She thought he would just fold. That all backfired.’
And, despite the fact that legal costs already stand at £4 million between them, there is still no sign of an agreement (Jolie pictured with their children in 2015)
The latest salvo came last week with Angelina claiming Brad hasn’t paid ‘meaningful’ child support since the couple separated.
Her remark led to Pitt filing his own papers, in which he said he ‘loaned’ his estranged wife $8 million (£6.3 million) to help her purchase her current house and that he has contributed over $1.3 million ‘in bills for the benefit of [Angelina] and the children’.
Despairing over Angelina’s public remarks, Pitt called her most recent claim ‘a thinly veiled effort to manipulate media coverage’.
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It was, he noted, ‘calculated to increase conflict’. Quite how much more conflict is to come is anyone’s guess.
Papers seen by the Mail reveal that even the question of which of them wants the divorce the most is a bone of contention.
According to the court documents, on August 7, Angelina’s legal team said that she wants to ‘bifurcate’ the divorce — this essentially means to divorce in two parts — and attain single status in the next four months.
Papers seen by the Mail reveal that even the question of which of them wants the divorce the most is a bone of contention
Sources close to her say she wants to be officially free of Brad this year, and then settle issues of custody, access and finance at a later point. A clear-cut solution to minimise further misery? Far from it.
Brad’s team furiously responded a day later to say that he was the one who had asked to bifurcate first, ‘on or about August 1’ — but that Angelina’s legal team wanted to ‘give the impression’ that it was all her idea.
A friend of Brad’s explains: ‘He went to her lawyers, very reasonably, to say this is what he wanted to do. The expectation is that you would then go ahead and agree.
‘But the next thing we know, she files and says it’s all her own idea.’
So what is Angelina after? A bifurcated divorce would see her follow the example of ‘hot felon’ Jeremy Meeks, who speeded up his divorce from former wife Melissa earlier this year in a bid to be single as soon as possible.
In his case, this was because his baby with girlfriend Chloe Green, the Topshop heiress, was due in June.
The main bone of contention surrounds the thorny issue of how they will co-parent the children — Maddox, 17, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 12, and ten-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne — with Angelina desperate to engineer full custody for herself
In the Pitts’ case, it is thought, Brad has simply had enough of the stalled divorce process, and was motivated by pure frustration to want to cut the cord. So why the ongoing kerfuffle?
A friend of Brad’s explains that, in his view, at some level, Angelina is still a little in love with Brad — and smarting from the cold realisation that he wants her out of his life as quickly as possible.
He said: ‘The issue is that she cares about him. There is a lot of emotion and history. There are very strong feelings.
‘When he said that he wanted to file, there was a realisation that he wanted to end it, finally, and she could not take that — which led to her accusing him of not paying to support the children and all the rest of it.
‘I think it’s really hard for her as she doesn’t want to give up on him on some level, and so when he said that he wanted to file [for the quickie divorce] it brought this huge reaction.
‘Meanwhile, he doesn’t want to give up on the kids, so we have a sad situation.’
Angelina’s newly hired PR spokeswoman, Mindy Nyby, says that her aim is to ‘promote closure to the marriage in a way that clears a path toward the next stage of their lives’.
Whether Angelina envisages the next stage of her life including any shared parenting is another matter.
A source said: ‘Angelina wants to be nomadic and free just like before, where she could pack the kids up with the nannies and teachers and travel the world at will.
‘Now she has been grounded and it’s killing her. She is desperate to get full custody so that she can do whatever she wants.’
From its lurid beginnings on Monday, September 19, 2016, when Angelina Jolie filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, the actress has been keen to keep the upper hand.
At the outset, she hired crisis management specialist Judy Smith, who used to help president George Bush Sr and now advises big corporations.
In the early days it was reported by multiple media outlets that there had been an incident in which Brad had ‘crossed a line’.
It was sensationally alleged that Brad, ‘drunk’, had got physical with adopted son Maddox during a confrontation aboard a private jet while it was refuelling.
Brad Pitt posing with his children (from left) Pax Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, and Maddox Jolie-Pitt and his parents Jane Etta Pitt and William Alvin Pitt at the premiere of Unbroken in 2014
The FBI and social services both investigated, and Brad was exonerated. ‘He is a flawed human being, like we all are, but a very good father and a nice guy,’ says a friend.
About allegations that he dallied with his co-star, Marion Cotillard, in the film Allied, partied with Russian hookers and had a terrible temper which left his wife ‘terrified’, he said nothing.
However, much to the dismay of Angelina and Judy Smith, no matter what was said about Brad Pitt, Angelina was still reviled.
And so the turnaround came: leaks started to emerge which suggested that she didn’t want to punish Brad after all.
In an interview with the BBC, she said: ‘It was a very difficult time and… we are a family and we will always be a family, and we will get through this time and hopefully be a stronger family for it.’
A few months later, in January 2017, Brad made a surprise appearance at the Golden Globes and was rapturously received by the audience.
The following day, the couple released a statement to say that they were seeking mediation via a private judge.
‘The parents are committed to act as a united front to effectuate recovery and reunification,’ it ran.
A source told me this week that having seen the standing ovation for Brad, Angelina’s lawyers contacted Brad’s team and asked for the statement to be made.
This was one of a number of signs of progress and reconciliation. Angelina let go of her brother, James Haven, who had been working as a ‘manny’ to the brood. This was balm to Brad, who had never got along with him.
Brad was further delighted when Angelina said she was going to buy a house in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, a stone’s throw from his home.
A few months later, in an interview with GQ, Brad shouldered much of the blame for the end of the marriage, admitting that he had been drinking too much and referred to his love — in the present tense — for Angelina.
Brad said: ‘We’re both doing our best. I heard one lawyer say: ‘No one wins in court — it’s just a matter of who gets hurt worse.’
‘You spend a year just focused on building a case to prove your point, and why you’re right and why they’re wrong, and it’s just an investment in vitriolic hatred. I just refuse. And fortunately my partner in this agrees.’
Sadly, he seems to be mistaken.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are seen after landing at Los Angeles International Airport with their children, Pax Jolie-Pitt, Maddox Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, Zahara Jolie-Pitt, Vivienne Jolie-Pitt and Knox Jolie-Pittin 2014
He thought that Angelina was going to let him take the children to his French chateau in the summer of 2017: instead they went on humanitarian trips with her.
Behind the scenes, he believed that she was making it hard for him to forge a relationship with his children during their visits. By this summer, open hostility broke out.
Over the spring, there had been protracted wrangles about her plans to bring the children to London during the filming of Maleficent 2.
Brad was in LA making a film with Quentin Tarantino, and felt that the children should not be taken away from their home base in Los Angeles for months on end.
Angelina has had primary physical custody of the children since the split, and Brad has been petitioning for joint custody.
In June, an LA judge ordered a temporary shared custody agreement, noting that Angelina was in danger of losing custody if she continued to limit Brad Pitt’s interaction with his children.
The ruling was a huge boost for the actor and film producer.
The judge laid out a ‘cellphone policy’ stating Angelina must provide Brad with the phone number of each child so he can text or call each of them at will, and without Jolie monitoring the conversations.
Two psychologists helped them to agree on a summer schedule, with Brad allowed access to the children. This week, there have been further meetings in LA about custody.
From now on, Brad has a right to custody of the kids for at least four hours every other day on school days, and 12 hours every other day on non-school days.
But is Angelina happy?
Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their six children Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne arrive at Haneda International Airport on November 8, 2011, in Tokyo, Japan
At the start of August, it was reported that her lawyer Laura Wasser — a glamorous fortysomething, lionised as the best in the business, who looked after Johnny Depp during his messy divorce — wanted to quit because of ‘lots of screaming’ on Angelina’s part, though the actress denies this.
Another source added: ‘She’s fuelled with anger and has gotten ridiculously unreasonable.’
Cue, says a friend, her claims regarding Brad’s non-payment of child support. A friend comments: ‘She has plenty of money — that is the bottom line.
‘She was paid $25 million for Maleficent, and Brad has given her over $9 million. Her complaints are ridiculous and not credible.’
The irony is that this could have been a relatively small beer divorce. They were married for only two years, so she is entitled to half of what he earned during this time, plus ongoing maintenance.
Instead, it is an unedifying story that is set to run and run.
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