Angelina Jolie has achieved a complete cutting of ties with Brad Pitt as their youngest children turn 18, closing a decade-long chapter of custody disputes. Meanwhile, a California appeals court ruled that wine domain buyer Yuri Shefler must face questioning in the ongoing Château de Miraval legal battle.
A decade after one of Hollywood’s most bitter divorces began, Angelina Jolie has finally reached the outcome she sought when she first filed in 2016. With twins Knox and Vivienne reaching adulthood on July 12, custody issues are no longer before the court, removing the last legal thread connecting the former couple regarding their children, according to family law experts.
The End of Court Oversight and the Shift in Family Dynamics
Pitt and Jolie share six children: Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, Pax, Knox, and Vivienne. Because Jolie could not achieve a total severance of ties during the initial divorce proceedings, she had to wait until the youngest children turned 18 to operate outside of court-mandated custody oversight. Holly Davis, cofounder of Kirker Davis LLP, noted that the milestone allows Jolie to achieve what she attempted to get in the 2016 divorce.
The transition into adulthood has been accompanied by public legal steps from several of the children. Vivienne Jolie-Pitt petitioned in Los Angeles County Superior Court to legally remove Pitt
from her last name just over a week after turning 18, changing her name to Vivienne Marcheline Jolie. The petition cited personal reasons, with a hearing scheduled for November 2. Two years prior, Vivienne worked as a producer assistant on the Broadway play The Outsiders alongside her mother and was credited simply as Vivienne Jolie in the playbill.
Other siblings have taken similar actions. Zahara filed to formally remove the surname in June, changing her name from Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie, following Shiloh’s name change in 2024. Maddox also filed a petition in May, meaning four of the six children have made moves to legally drop their father’s surname.
Legal Experts Weigh In on Public Standing and Career Impact
While family ties have fractured publicly, entertainment and crisis management experts are divided on whether the ongoing fallout will damage Pitt’s professional standing in Hollywood. Entertainment attorney Tre Lovell pointed out that the actor’s prominence and past public disclosures mean the family divide is unlikely to shock the public or sink his career.
Lovell added that most of the public would chalk it up to an unfortunate problem with the relationship with his kids. However, crisis communications expert Kaivan Shroff argued that the cumulative effect of multiple adult children publicly dropping a surname shifts the conversation from career accomplishments to personal character in a way that standard publicity campaigns cannot easily erase.
California Appeals Court Rulings on Château de Miraval
While the custody framework has concluded, the financial war between the former spouses over the Château de Miraval winery remains intensely active in the courts. The French wine estate, located in the Var region, was purchased together in 2011 for $60 million. Following their marriage in 2014 and Jolie’s subsequent divorce filing in 2016—with an official separation granted in 2019—the estate became a primary battleground.
In September 2021, Angelina Jolie sold her 50 percent share of the winemaking business for $64 million to Yuri Shefler, the Swiss owner of the Stolichnaya vodka brand. Brad Pitt filed suit in February 2022, arguing that the sale violated a mutual agreement stipulating that neither party could sell their share without the other’s consent. Jolie countered that no such agreement existed and that Pitt had refused her buyout offer unless she signed a non-disclosure agreement.
A significant procedural shift occurred when the California Court of Appeals cut short a lower court decision that had allowed Shefler to withdraw from the lawsuit. The lower court had previously suggested Shefler had minimal involvement in the transaction, but the appellate panel determined that the buyer played a central role. The court noted that Shefler personally guaranteed $39 million of his own funds to pay Jolie in installments.
With this ruling, Shefler cannot evade the U.S. legal process by claiming Swiss residency and must submit to questioning regarding how the transaction was structured. Meanwhile, Brad Pitt’s legal team is pursuing additional financial disclosures, having filed a request demanding that Angelina Jolie provide documents attesting to her acting income, particularly for the period from 2017 to 2019, which includes earnings from films such as Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019). Jolie’s lawyers have argued that these financial records are irrelevant to the estate dispute.
The broader financial lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial on February 1, 2027, with a mandatory mediation session slated for October 28.
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