The legal dispute between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has intensified, with Jolie accusing Pitt of attempting to coerce her into signing an $8.5 million non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to conceal “years of abuse.”
According to court documents filed on July 25 in Los Angeles County Superior Court and obtained, Jolie’s attorneys stated their support for Pitt, 60, revealing “private, third-party communications” he had about the family’s 2016 plane incident, which led to Jolie, 49, filing for divorce.
Pitt’s legal team previously responded to this motion, describing the request for his personal communications as “wide-ranging and intrusive.”
In the July 25 documents, Jolie’s legal team asserted that the actress “was not acting with malice and the intent to hurt Pitt in response to any custody ruling” when she sold her share of Château Miraval, the couple’s winery, in 2021.
(Pitt sued Jolie in 2022, alleging she unlawfully sold her shares in the French company. The former couple has also been involved in a prolonged custody battle over their children: Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 18, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 16.)
“Instead, it was Pitt who refused to buy her interest unless he received his newly expanded NDA, enforceable by an $8.5 million holdback specifically designed to force her silence about his abuse and cover-up,” stated the documents.
Jolie noted in her motion that “abuse survivors are often discredited and rarely believed on their word alone.” She alleged that Pitt wanted to “bury” his “own hurtful emails demonstrating his past abuse of Jolie and their children” when the Offer of Proof was considered for their previous testimony.
“In response, he demanded Jolie sign the expanded NDA to prevent her from ever speaking of it,” claimed Jolie’s motion.
According to the court documents, Pitt, known for Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood, denied using the NDA to cover up any alleged abuse.
In a May filing obtained, a judge ruled that Jolie must produce all NDAs she signed with third parties over an eight-year span from 2014 to 2022.
“The issue of NDAs has become a significant battleground in the dispute over the award-winning Château Miraval business,” a member of Pitt’s legal team told .
“Jolie claims she backed out of selling her stake to Pitt after he asked her to sign an ‘unconscionable’ privacy agreement as part of the business deal – a defense Pitt insists is undermined by her own routine use of NDAs.”
He added that “Jolie’s defense is a cover story she concocted to ‘rationalize’ the decision to sell her stake” in Miraval. The Mr. and Mrs. Smith stars first gained controlling interest in Miraval in 2008.
They began selling their own rosé in March 2013 and got married at the chateau in August 2014. Pitt claimed that after Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, they both agreed not to sell their Miraval shares without mutual consent.
However, in 2021, Jolie sold her portion of the business to Tenute del Mondo, the wine division of the Stoli group, owned by Russian businessman Yuri Shefler. Pitt argued in his filing that his ex-wife made the sale without his knowledge or consent.
In July, Jolie’s legal team filed a motion requesting that Pitt drop his lawsuit over the French winery to “end the fighting and finally put their family on a clear path toward healing.”
