Jolie and Pitt reach divorce settlement after 8 years

LOS ANGELES

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a divorce settlement, her lawyer said on Dec. 30, bringing an apparent 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,” Jolie's attorney James Simon said in a statement. “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.”

Jolie, 49, and 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.

Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, after a private jet flight from Europe during which she said Pitt was abusive toward her and their children. The FBI and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigated Pitt's actions on the flight and deemed no action needed to be taken against him.

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 that the two had hired to handle the case reached a decision that included equal custody of their children, but 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.

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. There have been no official court actions in the case in nearly a year, and no indication that the two had been nearing an agreement.