Attorneys for actor Brad Pitt want a Los Angeles judge to force his ex-wife, actress Angelina Jolie, to hand over three years of financial records in the grinding fight over Château Miraval. Their July 31, 2026, motion says Jolie first agreed to produce the material and then reversed course on February 23.
At issue are the years 2017 through 2019, the stretch immediately following the couple’s 2016 separation. Pitt’s broader request reaches through 2021, and of everything sought, those three years are the only ones Jolie has refused. Withholding information about what she earned after the split is the accusation Pitt, 62, levels at Jolie, 51. Her side had agreed to provide declarations answering two discovery requests, plus profit-participation statements covering 2017 through 2021, but his filing says she later “withdrew her agreement,” producing statements and tax records for 2020 and 2021 alone.
The Offer Pitt’s Lawyers Put Forward
Pitt’s lawyers floated a way to close out this corner of the discovery dispute without the older paperwork ever changing hands. A stipulation would do it, they said: Jolie need only affirm that she faced no economic pressure before January 1, 2020, and that Pitt never economically coerced her at any point from 2017 to 2019. She said no, so it now falls to the court to decide how deeply his attorneys may dig into her post-separation earnings.
Those years matter, his attorneys argue, because of the explanations Jolie herself has offered for wanting out of the wine venture. Their motion pointed to her earlier assertions that she was seeking financial independence from Pitt, that she had largely shelved her career and forfeited years of pay after the 2016 breakup, and that any 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 precisely that. The court had floated a narrowing of her testimony about earnings and compensation at a June discovery conference, his team noted, and she turned that suggestion down.
Jolie Says She Never Alleged Financial Distress
Jolie’s lawyers answered Pitt’s original request in a June filing. “The entire basis for Pitt compelling these answers is a made-up theory that Jolie did not allege,” her attorneys wrote. She has never alleged financial distress, her filing states. What she sought, the response says, was to untangle her financial life from the spouse she was divorcing; her lawyers call that categorically different from general financial hardship, and dispositive. No obligation required it, the response added, yet income and tax statements for 2020 and 2021 had already gone over, and reaching back any further would seriously invade her privacy.
Miraval has not seen Jolie since 2016, by her own account, and her filings link 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. The FBI reviewed the incident and declined to bring charges, and a Los Angeles County child-welfare investigation did not substantiate them. Pitt’s team was also seeking details about Jolie’s income from movies, sponsorships and other work after the separation, according to reporting in August, while her lawyers maintained those private earnings could not explain why she sold Miraval.
The $67 Million Sale at the Center
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 the whole dispute traces back to that deal. Tenute del Mondo is the wine arm of the Luxembourg-headquartered Stoli Group, the company behind the Stolichnaya vodka brand, which is indirectly owned and controlled by Yuri Shefler, the Russian-born billionaire. In February 2022, Pitt sued; his lawsuit alleged that an agreement between the former spouses barred either of them from selling an interest in Miraval to an outside buyer without the other’s consent. No such agreement ever existed, Jolie counters.
Jolie had asked a judge in July 2021, months before that sale, to lift the standard divorce-court order freezing asset transfers, which blocked her from selling her shares in the company that owns the château. A buyout of her stake was something Pitt weighed in 2021, but payment terms eluded the two sides, as did noncompete and non-disparagement provisions. Jolie has said the buyout talks collapsed over a proposed nondisclosure agreement (NDA) she considered too sweeping; Pitt’s side maintains an NDA was appropriate to protect the Miraval business.
Rulings Already on the Books
The motion to compel is merely the newest skirmish. A Los Angeles judge sided with Jolie in a separate discovery fight on May 5, 2026, ruling that she did not have to give Pitt 22 unredacted communications covered by attorney-client privilege; Judge Ciny Panuco found he “has not met his burden,” and also denied Jolie’s request for sanctions. In late June a California court cleared the way for depositions involving Stoli representatives to proceed.
The couple leased Miraval in 2008, bought it in 2011 and married there in 2014. After separating in 2016, they jointly owned the property until 2021 and finalized their divorce in December 2024, closing out a roughly eight-year fight under terms both sides kept confidential. Trial in the winery case is expected in August 2027. No ruling on the motion to compel had come as of September 7.