Attorneys for actor Brad Pitt have accused his ex-wife, actress Angelina Jolie, of agreeing to hand over financial records in the long-running Château Miraval fight and then backing out. In a motion dated July 31, 2026, they asked a Los Angeles judge to force her to produce three years of those records, saying she reversed course on February 23.
At issue are the years 2017 through 2019, the stretch that followed the couple’s 2016 separation. Pitt’s broader request extends through 2021, and those three years are the only portion Jolie has refused. Pitt, 62, accuses Jolie, 51, of withholding information about what she earned once the marriage ended. Her side had agreed to supply declarations answering two discovery requests, plus profit-participation statements covering 2017 through 2021, but his filing says she later “withdrew her agreement,” turning over statements and tax records for 2020 and 2021 alone.
The Offer From Pitt’s Legal Team
Pitt’s lawyers floated an exit that would have closed out this piece of the discovery dispute without any of the older paperwork moving. They would abandon the requests, their offer said, on two conditions: that Jolie stipulate she faced no economic pressure before January 1, 2020, and that she stipulate Pitt never economically coerced her at any point from 2017 to 2019. She said no, leaving it to the court to decide how deeply his attorneys may dig into her post-separation earnings.
Why those years matter, his lawyers argue, comes down to the explanations Jolie herself has offered for wanting out of the wine venture. Three earlier assertions of hers appear in their motion: that financial independence from Pitt was what she was pursuing, that the 2016 breakup left her career largely on hold and cost her years of pay, and that whatever leverage he held over her stemmed from her finances at the time. Her financial information stays private unless she makes it relevant, the filing says, and Pitt’s camp maintains she has done exactly that. His team also observed that at a June discovery conference she rejected the court’s suggestion that her testimony about earnings and compensation be narrowed.
Jolie Says She Never Alleged Financial Distress
In June, Jolie’s lawyers answered Pitt’s original request. “The entire basis for Pitt compelling these answers is a made-up theory that Jolie did not allege,” her attorneys wrote. No allegation of financial distress has ever come from her, according to her filing; what she sought, it says, was to untangle her financial life from the spouse she was divorcing. Her lawyers call that distinction categorically different from general financial hardship, and dispositive. Income and tax statements for 2020 and 2021 had already gone to Pitt’s side despite no obligation to produce them, the response added, and going back any further would seriously invade her privacy.
Miraval has not seen Jolie since 2016, she says, and her filings tie her decision to sell to what they describe as physical and emotional abuse by Pitt against her and their children in September 2016 — allegations Pitt has denied and of which he was cleared. Reporting in August indicated his team was also seeking details about her income from movies, sponsorships and other work following the split; her lawyers, meanwhile, maintained those private earnings could not explain why she sold Miraval.
The $67 Million Sale Behind the Fight
Nouvel — the company through which Jolie held her 50 percent interest in the Provence, France, estate — went to Tenute del Mondo for $67 million in October 2021, and it all goes back to that sale. A Luxembourg-based spirits manufacturer affiliated with the Stolichnaya vodka brand, Tenute del Mondo belongs to the corporate group tied to Stoli and Yuri Shefler, the Russian-born billionaire who controls it. February 2022 brought Pitt’s lawsuit, which alleged that an agreement between the former spouses barred either one from selling an interest in Miraval to an outside buyer without the other’s consent. No such agreement ever existed, Jolie contends.
Months before that sale, a judge heard Jolie’s July 2021 request to lift a restraining order that blocked her from selling her shares in the company that owns the château. A buyout of her stake was something Pitt considered in 2021, but payment terms were never settled, nor were noncompete and non-disparagement provisions. A proposed nondisclosure agreement (NDA) she considered too sweeping is what collapsed the buyout talks, Jolie has said; Pitt’s side maintains an NDA was appropriate to protect the Miraval business.
Rulings Already Issued
This motion to compel is only the newest skirmish. A Los Angeles judge sided with Jolie in a separate discovery fight on May 4, 2026, ruling that she did not have to give Pitt 22 unredacted communications covered by attorney-client privilege. Then, on June 17, a California court cleared the way for depositions involving Stoli representatives to proceed.
The pair bought Miraval in 2008 and married there in 2014. Their 2016 separation did not end the joint ownership, which ran until 2021, and they finalized their divorce in December 2024 after a roughly eight-year fight, under terms both sides kept confidential. The winery case is expected to go to trial in August 2027.