More than eight years after their initial split, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have finally reached a divorce settlement.
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For a quick reminder, Brad and Angelina started dating back in 2005 after meeting on the set of their movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith. They didn’t get married until August 2014, when they tied the knot in front of just 20 guests, including their six children: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twins Vivienne and Knox.
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Barely two years later, the marriage came crumbling down when Angelina filed for divorce on Sept. 19, 2016 — days after an alleged altercation on a private jet where Brad was accused of physically and verbally assaulting Angelina and Maddox, who was 15 years old at the time.
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The incident was investigated by child welfare officials, and Brad was later cleared of any wrongdoing. The FBI, which has jurisdiction in the air, also ruled that further investigation was unnecessary.
This brings us to Dec. 30, 2024, when the couple’s divorce battle finally concluded after eight years of intense legal fighting. Angelina’s lawyer, James Simon, said in a statement that the Oscar-winning actor is “exhausted” but “relieved” that “this one part is over.”
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“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,” the statement read. “This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago.”
As it stands, neither Brad nor Angelina have personally commented on the news.
A divorce battle of this length is pretty unconventional, even by Hollywood standards. And while neither Brad nor Angelina have talked in great detail about the split, we do know that the legal dissolution of their marriage was complicated by the 2016 abuse allegations and several other factors relating to their shared assets and the custody of their children.
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On Dec. 30, an inside source told People that the Maleficent star “doesn’t speak ill of [Brad] publicly or privately.” And now, a subsequent report has alleged that the couple’s six kids — who are now adults, apart from the 16-year-old twins — were rooting for their mom to publicly speak out throughout the ongoing divorce.
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“They have wanted her to speak up for herself, to defend herself over these years,” an anonymous insider said of the children in a report published by People on Jan. 1. However, they suggested that Angelina found it important to choose privacy and look at the bigger picture, apparently reminding the kids to “focus on changing laws over telling public stories.”
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“She’s been trying hard to be light after a dark time,” the source continued. “The kids have grown up seeing that some people have so much power and privilege that their voices don’t matter. Their pain doesn’t count.”
Angelina has put a lot of time into campaigning for human rights, particularly with regard to children’s rights. In 2021, she published a book titled Know Your Rights and Claim Them, which is described as “a resource for children and young people to learn about their rights” to give them “the knowledge they need to protect themselves and others.”
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While discussing the book in 2021, Angelina told the Guardian she was inspired to write it after “an experience in the States with [her] own children,” which led her to feel their rights were violated.
“I remembered the rights of the child, and I took them out and looked at them and thought: well, these are for when you’re in a situation and you want to make sure there is support for the children in your life,” she said, confirming later in the interview that she was referring to her divorce and allegations she leveled against Brad in 2016.
It has been widely speculated that Brad’s relationship with his kids was left badly strained by his and Angelina’s split. He has not been seen with or spoken publicly about any of his children in years, and a source told People in July 2024 that he has “virtually no contact with the adult kids” — Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 19, and Shiloh, 18.
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As for his minor children, the insider claimed Brad “has visitation” with Knox and Vivienne per an agreement with Angelina.
Though Brad and Angelina’s children are all very private, some of them have seemingly taken measures to publicly distance themselves from their father by dropping “Pitt” from their last names.
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While it’s been reported that Zahara and Vivienne have opted to go by “Jolie” instead of “Jolie-Pitt,” Shiloh made headlines in 2024 when news broke that she filed to drop “Pitt” from her name legally.
