Brad & Angie: it’s getting ugly
Their divorce is turning into a battleground, with Angie claiming he’s not coughing up for the kids and Brad saying she’s just being manipulative
JULY 2016, Jamba Juice bar, Los Angeles, California. A couple walk in with their pre-teen kid for something freshly squeezed, maybe a cup of coffee and something to nibble. Music is playing and the man grabs the woman from behind and they start dancing around a little. They’re relaxed and laughing, the chemistry between them electric – real get-a-room vibes. You almost feel sorry for their kid: who wants to see their parents behave like this in public? Gross.
Today that kid and her five siblings probably look back at those public displays of affection with longing and sadness because they’re as unlikely to happen now as an announcement of a penguin colony on the Sun.
That day in the juice bar with Shiloh was the last time Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were seen together. Two months later the beautiful couple known as Brangelina had imploded with a shock force felt around the globe – and two years later the ugliness just goes on and on.
For a while after the split the pair made all the right noises: the children come
Tfirst, they remained united in their wish for the kids to be as unaffected as possible. As People magazine puts it, after “an initial flurry of bitter accusations, they entered divorce mediation and largely kept their negotiations private”.
But the divorce has burst into the headlines again as Brad (54) and Angie (43) go head to head about visitation rights and child support for Maddox (17), Pax (14), Zahara (13), Shiloh (12) and twins Knox and Vivienne (10).
Last year in an interview with GQ Style, Brad said how he’d heard a lawyer say “no one wins in court – it’s just a matter of who gets hurt worst”.
Right now, it seems he and his ex are in competition to see just who can inflict the most bruises. HE latest drama started earlier this month when Angie’s lawyer Samantha Bley DeJean filed papers saying Brad “has a duty to pay child support. As of present Brad Pitt has paid no meaningful child support since separation”. “Given [that] the informal arrangements around the payment of the chil- dren’s expenses have not been regularly sustained by [Brad] for over a year and a half, [Angelina] intends to file an RFO [request for a court order] for the establishment of a retroactive child support order.”
The next day Brad’s lawyer, Lawrence Spiegel, hit back, calling the filing “unnecessary” and “a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate media coverage” – the one thing the pair had steadfastly tried to keep to a minimum since their split.
Spiegel filed papers that showed Brad had “loaned” Angelina $8 million (R116 million) to buy her $25 million (R362,5 million) Los Angeles home after the break-up and had “contributed $3,1 million (R44,95 million) for the benefit of Ms Jolie and the minor children”.
Not so fast, DeJean shot back: Brad’s lawyer’s filing was “a blatant attempt to obfuscate the truth and distract from the fact he hasn’t fully met his legal obligations to support the children”. “A loan isn’t child support and to represent it as such is misleading and inaccurate.” What’s more, she added, Angelina was paying interest on the home loan.
Although, as celebrity news site TMZ points out, why did Angie need a loan at
all? The actress is worth $160 million (R2,32 billion). Sure, Brad’s net worth is $240 million (R3,48 billion) – but still. Couldn’t she afford her own deposit?
A source close to Angie says she hasn’t worked much since the split and getting her hands on large amounts of cash isn’t always easy. “She and the children travel a lot and they don’t have conventional lives. Their lifestyle costs a lot.”
Steve Mindel, a family law specialist, told People magazine Angelina’s intention to file an RFO for backdated child maintenance is unusual in cases involving “people of such public fame”. “They typically handle the matter privately to keep details of their lives under wraps. If Angelina seeks an RFO she’ll need to prove to the court why she needs support.”
David Glass, a US divorce lawyer says the RFO could be an “arduous process”. “Angelina and Brad will need to make the case for what the children’s ‘reasonable needs’ are which gets complicated when the parents are extraordinary earners. They need to explain all the extraordinary expenses these kids have.
“They travel back and forth from LA
Fto London on private planes, they have to have private tutors because they’re constantly travelling – that’s an expensive thing. These numbers are high but the court will only go so high on what the reasonable needs are.” OR a while, things seemed to be ticking along as smoothly as possible in a complicated situation like this. Brad and Angie kept the peace and got back to their lives. He devoted most of his time to getting sober, became more embedded in the art and architecture world and started dating Neri Oxman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Angelina sank back into her human rights work and made the movie Maleficent 2. But in June this year things took a turn for the nasty. Brad accused Angelina of taking the kids out of the US too often and a judge ruled she’d lose primary custody of them if she didn’t allow the kids to form “a healthy and strong relationship with their father”. But the problem, according to a source, is that Angelina can’t get over whatever it is that happened on that plane from France to LA in September 2016. Although Brad was cleared of child abuse charges “it was the final straw for her and she’s been out for blood ever since”. “She wants to kill any relationship he has with the kids,” the source told TMZ. “She’s fuelled with anger and has become ridiculously unreasonable.” Things got so bad there were reports Laura Wasser, Angelina’s high-profile lawyer, had quit because her client had “become so venomous” – but Angie’s people have denied she’s left and say she’s “not quitting now or in the future”. One thing’s for sure, another insider says: Brad and Angelina are nowhere close to settling this thing. You have to feel for the kids. In his GQ article Brad talks about divorce cases in general being “an investment in vitriolic hatred”. “I just refuse to go that route and fortunately my partner in this agrees. It’s just very, very jarring for the kids, to suddenly have their family ripped apart.” Sadly, an investment in vitriolic hatred is exactly what this is turning out to be.