It was a seemingly perfect family in a picture-perfect magazine feature
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sat in their sunlit glory, playing with their pretend children in their pretend backyard in a now-legendary 60-page photo spread titled “Domestic Bliss” in the July 2005 issue of W Magazine.
The scenes of make-believe family depicted in the pages of the fashion magazine, published nearly 19 years ago, foreshadowed what went on to become a reality for the “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” co-stars: Six children between them and a loving relationship that saw the pair experience professional successes and weather personal hardships in seemingly equal measure.
Once Hollywood’s most glamorous power couple, Pitt and Jolie have been locked in a fraught web of legal proceedings since 2016. The divorce of the couple once dubbed Brangelina is not yet finalized and a painful family rift remains.
A source close to Pitt told CNN that the actor “loves his family” and ”wants what’s best” for them. “And so he’s stayed silent on discussing anything about his kids even though it’s obviously very upsetting,” the individual said.
The length of their ongoing divorce can be attributed to a number of factors, including a contentious custody trial, fallout from a 2016 incident on a plane and a complicated legal dispute relating to Jolie’s sale of her stake in Château Miraval, the French winery that the former couple once co-owned and the property on which they were married in 2014.
All Jolie has ever wanted, a source close to Jolie told CNN, “is peace for her family and she hopes [Pitt] will eventually want that too.”
CNN has reached to representatives for both Pitt and Jolie for comment.
Their Hollywood love story may have been photogenic, but their split has been nothing less than a legal drama with no end yet written. Here’s a look back at their legal feud so far:
The 2016 plane incident
What could be considered the end of Brangelina allegedly took place on a private plane in September 2016.
Details surrounding the circumstances of the incident emerged in August 2022, when a heavily redacted FBI report, provided to CNN by a source at the time, revealed that Jolie had accused Pitt of physically assaulting her and verbally abusing their children while they were aboard the private jet, traveling to the US from France.
Pitt became the center of a probe related to the incident but was never arrested or charged, according to an FBI statement at the time.
Jolie alleged that Pitt “grabbed her by her head,” “grabbed her by the shoulders,” shook her, pushed her into the plane’s bathroom wall and was yelling profanities at her, according to the FBI report, which also stated Pitt allegedly lunged toward one of their children, resulting in Jolie suffering a physical injury after she tried to intervene.
In an October 2022 countersuit in a legal case involving their winery (more on that in a bit), Jolie alleged that Pitt “choked one of the children and struck another in the face” during the incident. In response, a representative for Pitt told CNN in a statement at the time that, “Brad has accepted responsibility for what he did but will not for things he didn’t do.”
In April, Jolie claimed in another legal filing from the winery case that Pitt’s “history of physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family’s September 2016 plane trip.” The filing did not go into further detail about the alleged prior abuse.
According to that filing, Jolie chose not to press charges against Pitt in relation to the plane incident at the time because she believed “the best course was for Pitt to accept responsibility and help the family recover from the post-traumatic stress he caused.”
Jolie files for divorce
In September 2016, just days after the incident on the private jet, Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt, citing irreconcilable differences. According to the petition, Jolie asked the court to grant her sole physical custody of the couple’s then-minor children – Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twins Knox and Vivienne, who were between the ages of 8 and 15 at the time – with visitation rights for Pitt, who would retain joint legal custody.
