A Two-Year Marriage and Eight Years of Filings: What the Pitt–Jolie Record Confirms

What the record shows

They were together eleven years, married for two of them, and have spent longer litigating the end of the marriage than they spent inside it. Almost everything the public believes it knows about why comes from filings written by one side to persuade a court — which is not the same thing as a finding.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie began a relationship in 2005, married on 23 August 2014 at Château Miraval in France, and Jolie filed for dissolution of the marriage on 19 September 2016. Custody and property litigation ran for years afterwards, and the commercial dispute over the Miraval winery continued even after the divorce was settled in late 2024.

Dates and documents

1. 2004–2005

   The pair meet on the production of Mr. & Mrs. Smith and begin a relationship.

2. 2006–2012

   Their family grows to six children through birth and adoption. Both are, in this period, among the highest-paid actors in the world.

3. April 2012

   Engagement confirmed by their representatives.

4. 12 June 2014

   They appear together with the UK Foreign Secretary at the End Sexual Violence in Conflict summit in London — the photograph at the top of this page.

5. 23 August 2014

   They marry at Château Miraval, Correns, France.

6. September 2016

   An incident aboard a private flight is reported to authorities; a federal investigation follows.

7. 19 September 2016

   Jolie files for dissolution of marriage in Los Angeles.

8. November 2016

   The federal investigation closes without any charges being brought against anyone.

9. April 2019

   The court grants a bifurcated judgment restoring both to single status while custody and property remain unresolved.

10. October 2021

    Jolie's stake in the Miraval winery is sold to a subsidiary of the Stoli Group.

11. July 2021

    A California appeals court disqualifies the privately retained judge in the custody case over disclosure obligations, voiding his rulings.

12. February 2022

    Pitt sues over the winery sale, arguing it breached an agreement between them. Jolie's side counter-sues.

13. December 2024

    Representatives for both confirm the divorce itself has been settled.

What the sources support

• PUBLIC RECORD: the August 2014 marriage in France, the September 2016 dissolution petition, the April 2019 single-status judgment and the December 2024 settlement.
• PUBLIC RECORD: in July 2021 a California appellate court disqualified the private judge hearing the custody case for failing to disclose business relationships with counsel, and his rulings were vacated. This was a procedural failure of the forum, not a decision about either parent.
• PUBLIC RECORD: the federal investigation into the September 2016 flight concluded in November 2016 without charges against anyone.
• PUBLIC RECORD: the Miraval dispute is live civil litigation, with pleadings filed by both sides.
• CONFIRMED: Pitt spoke on the record in a 2017 interview about his drinking and said he had stopped; he has repeated that account publicly since.
• CONFIRMED: both continued to work at the top of the industry throughout — Jolie increasingly as a director and in humanitarian roles, Pitt as an actor and producer.

Public reactions on the record

Jolie's representatives said at the time of the 2016 filing that the decision had been made for the health of the family. That is the extent of her contemporaneous public statement; almost everything else attributed to her since has come through court filings rather than press interviews.

Pitt's most substantial on-record comment came in a 2017 magazine interview in which he discussed drinking, said he had stopped, and described the period as the lowest of his life. He has not publicly disputed the fact of the 2016 incident being investigated; he has disputed the characterisations of it made in later filings.

Where the record stops

This is the part where most coverage goes wrong, so it is worth stating precisely. Allegations contained in custody and civil filings are allegations. No court has made a finding against Pitt in relation to the 2016 flight, and no charges were ever brought. Pitt denies the characterisations in Jolie's filings. In the other direction, Pitt's claims about the winery sale are contested by Jolie's side, which argues she was entitled to sell her own stake. Both sets of claims are DISPUTED. Neither is reported here as established fact, and no filing is treated as evidence of what it asserts.

The reason the record looks murky is structural: when a case settles, nothing is adjudicated. A settlement ends a dispute without resolving it, which is why the internet's version of this story will never converge on an answer the courts never gave.

Why the custody case took so long

The single biggest driver of delay was procedural rather than personal. The couple used a privately retained judge — a common arrangement in high-profile California family cases, intended to keep proceedings out of a public courtroom. In July 2021 an appellate court disqualified that judge for failing to disclose business relationships with lawyers involved in the case, and his rulings were vacated. Years of contested hearings had to be revisited.

That single ruling is the most misreported item in the entire case. It said nothing about either parent. It said the forum had been improperly constituted. Coverage that presented it as a win for one side was describing something the court did not decide.

The vineyard, and why it outlasted the marriage

Continue reading · What happened next?They Broke Up, Married Other People, Reunited, Married — Then It Fell Apart AgainJennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck called off a wedding in 2003, spent seventeen years apart, married in Las Vegas in 2022 — and the divorce petition arrived on their anniversary, to the day.

Château Miraval is not a symbol here; it is a business with shareholders. The couple acquired the estate together and it became a commercially successful wine producer, and their respective stakes were an asset like any other. When Jolie's interest was sold in 2021 to a company connected to the Stoli Group, Pitt sued, arguing that a prior agreement gave him a right of consent over any sale. Jolie's side argues no enforceable agreement of that kind existed and that she was entitled to sell what she owned.

Both positions are pleadings. Neither has been established. What is verifiable is the structure of the fight: a divorce settles in 2024, and a commercial dispute over a French winery keeps generating filings afterwards, in a different court, under different law.

What followed

The divorce was settled in December 2024, more than eight years after the petition. The commercial litigation over the vineyard remained on foot after that settlement — the property fight, not the marriage, became the longer-running case, and it is the one still generating filings.

There is one more reason this case resists a clean summary. Both parties are represented by experienced counsel and both have, at different points, made their filings available in ways that guaranteed coverage. A filing is an advocacy document. Reading one as a neutral account of events is the single most common error in reporting on this divorce, and it is the reason two well-sourced articles can describe the same eight years and reach opposite conclusions.

What the eight years cost in documents

Divorce cases in California are ordinarily measured in months. This one ran from September 2016 to the restoration of single status in April 2019 and then continued, on custody and on property, for years afterwards — an unusual duration produced by an unusual number of contested procedural questions rather than by any single explosive allegation.

Two of those questions are worth naming precisely, because they are matters of record rather than interpretation. The first is bifurcation: the couple asked the court to end the marriage itself before resolving the remaining issues, which is why they were legally single years before the case closed. The second is the disqualification of a privately compensated judge in 2021, on the ground that he had not disclosed enough about his professional relationships with counsel — a ruling by the California Court of Appeal that vacated custody findings and sent the matter back. Neither of those is a finding about either parent. Both are the reason the file is as long as it is.

Everything else that circulated during those years — the accounts of what happened on a private flight in September 2016, the descriptions of the children's positions, the characterisations of either parent's conduct — sits in one of two categories: allegations made in filings, or reporting attributed to unnamed sources. An investigation by the FBI and by child welfare authorities closed without charges. That is the outcome of record, and it is the only one this article states as fact.

What became of them

Both work continuously. Jolie has moved substantially toward directing, humanitarian work and a fashion venture, and stepped down from her long-running UNHCR Special Envoy role in 2022. Pitt continues acting and producing through Plan B, in which he sold a majority stake in 2022. Neither has publicly commented on the settlement terms, and the terms are not in the public record.

The winery litigation over Château Miraval, filed in 2022, is a separate commercial dispute rather than a family-law matter, and it remains live. It is included here only because it is the one part of the story still generating documents — and because it is a useful reminder that a marriage of twelve years and a business partnership of ten do not end on the same schedule.