Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are still, quite obviously, in a divorce battle. The most recent story was that Angelina has informed the family court that she will provide evidence and testimony of Brad’s domestic violence. This is related to their ongoing custody dispute over their five minor children – Maddox is old enough to do what he wants, and he doesn’t want to see Brad. Apparently, Pax doesn’t want to see Brad either, and I’m starting to wonder if Zahara has opted out whenever possible. Anyway, you get the idea – the custody issues are still messy and the lawyers’ billable hours are piling up, especially given the fact that the divorce case has been happening for four and a half years, and it’s likely to keep going. The Daily Mail claims that Brad & Angelina have already spent $1 million each on the lawyers and such. That’s a low figure.
Legal experts in Los Angeles say each have each spent over $1million in legal costs already – and say the custody battle could go on for six more years. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt still have not reached a settlement on how to split their multi-million dollar fortunes or the custody of their five underage kids.
Angie recently sold a painting by Winston Churchill that Brad is believed to have gifted her. Rumors quickly spread that she offloaded the artwork – which sold at auction in London for a record $11.5million earlier this month – to shore up her legal war chest for the battle ahead with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood actor Brad.
LA divorce attorney Kelly Chang Rickert told DailyMail.com: ‘I think this could become one of the most expensive divorce cases in Hollywood history in terms of legal fees. It has been going on for over four years now so it’s definitely one of the longest celebrity cases we’ve ever seen. I believe Angelina and Brad have already spent over $1million each. They are both employing very reputable attorneys and Angelina has already gone through several. Hourly rates may range from between $1,000 to $1,500 and I would estimate that these lawyers may be billing 40 or 50 hours a week at times.
‘They have also hired a private judge who probably bills around $900 to $1,000 an hour, so he is probably costing $10,000 a day. If they used him for a five-day trial, he would probably take $50,000 up front and another $10,000 to review paperwork beforehand. I would say they’ve paid the judge himself probably close to half a million dollars between them,’ she added. ‘When Angelina recently sold the painting at auction, people asked if that meant they are close to settling. I actually think she sold it to pay more attorney’s fees, that’s just my pessimistic divorce lawyer point of view,’ Rickert said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised that that’s what it’s for, but it could be for other things too.
‘Angelina seems to think she can get sole custody of the kids, but that is just not the case. She can keep paying millions and millions and millions but as long as Brad wants custody and fights for it, she’s going to have to share. Their youngest kids, twins Knox and Vivienne, are 12 so this could go on another six years until they reach the age of majority at 18. I’ve definitely had cases go on and on and on until the kids are adults. Very nasty ones keep going and Angelina changing attorneys is an indication that she needs to get her own way and isn’t willing to give up. It’s almost worse when people have the money because they’ll just keep fighting. Other people run out of money but Angelina has the means to keep paying for lawyers.’
Brad has had an entire team of lawyers, legal advisors, publicists and crisis managers on his payroll since September 2016, just after the plane incident. He’s already spent MILLIONS on just his legal and PR response to Angelina. He’s also been slow-walking his financial disclosures to Angelina and her team, and we also know that he put up a fight about providing child support during the divorce. As for Angelina’s finances… I think she’s probably already spent millions in legal fees, family therapists and all of that. But I don’t think she’s broke – I think she’s just willing to spend the money to fight for what’s right, in her mind. Anyway, this Kelly Chang Rickert sounds like a dumbass.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
From my understanding with custody court cases (which is admittedly little) older children and teenagers have more of a say about with whom they live. Pax is 17, Zahara is 16. This seems to be a non issue. Shiloh, knox and Vivienne are younger but would still have some weight.
Considering all the PR that Brad’s put out, I think it’s really telling that we haven’t seen him (to my recollection) with the kids since their separation. I think if he was spending non-supervised, casual, frequent time with them, he would milk it.
doesn’t really matter what the kids want. if he can get 50/50 custody (and only sees them once a month) he can pay less child support. it’s all about the money at this point
In my opinion, Angelina knew Brad would fight dirty so that’s why she said yes to Disney mega millions (probably got minimum 15 million each for Maleficent 2, Eternals, Ivan) and accepted Those who wish to kill me, Every note played and now directing a movie.
The fact that Angelina & Samantha evoked family code 3042 means they have their ducks in a row. Brad thought Angelina would step away quickly like Jennifer did but she proved him wrong.
I also think Brad tried as much as he could to avoid a trial because evidence would then be provided. Now here we are and he is petrified since this is year 2021 and abusers don’t get away with everything.
Kelly Chang Rickert is same as Laura Wasser, both on the abusive male side.
cower like jennifer.
imagine saying something like that and thinking it’s great.
Sorry I actually wrote another word and didn’t realise it had autocorrected it to cower. I changed it to something else as soon as I could.
It seems CB haven’t updated my change request yet.
What the hell is a private judge lol ?
The rich and famous hire private judges who are experienced in dealing with massive-personal-wealth individuals and provide discreet proceedings/trials. Same legal authority as a regular court and same guy who married them.
Not in family law but if this person thinks the big name divorce lawyers are writing the briefs and all that, they aren’t. The associates at their firm are doing the brief writing and all the nuts and bolts— and they cost a lot less; I’m not sure what the going market rate is for an associate at that sort of practice. And they are not f-cking billing 50 hours a week, jfc.
Also, who knows what kind of fee arrangments they’ve made and partners always write a lot of stuff off. Because sure, you can have a famous lawyer with great reputation representing you, but maybe there’s an up and coming lawyer who’s cheaper and would hustle more on your behalf. Of the two, I would pick the one willing to dedicate more of their time and efforts advocating on my behalf.
I don’t know what a reasonable ballpark is for a divorce that goes on this long for people of such high net worth. I have a skewed perspective also because $1 million seems really low. Some of the huge corporate matters, a team might blow through $1.5 – $6 million per week.
Worked on one thing that client spared no expense because a LOT was on the line— something like $1 -$2 million per DAY, over a month. Huge team, and in that case the partners did bill like 80 hours per week, never mind the enormous team of lawyers and paralegals. Paralegals are the backbone of a lot of teams— partners and attorneys will choose to work exclusively with one paralegal throughout their entire career. A lot of paralegals have institutional knowledge attorneys simply don’t have— an attorney may never go to trial in their entire career while a paralegal might go to trial every friggin month. It’s insane.
Can’t compare corporate matters to family law matters, right? The level of detail is just not the same. These two are rich but they don’t have that kind of bank to be blowing through even 250K or 500K per active week of the case. However I think 1 million does sound very conservative. I think they’ve spent more than that.
Oh I completely agree with you re corporate vs. family law. But I think you’re right, $1 million sounds conservative, since it would only be $250K per year (this has been going on for four years, righ?). $250K is way too low. With Brad spending so much money on publicity and all, maybe he’s going through $1-$2 million a year between the lawyers and the publicity team. Angelina is keeping costs down(?), but also supporting the six kids.
I bet they’ve spent way more than that. Each. This thing has dragged on for almost 5 years. I hope when it’s all said and done, he has to write her a fat check.
Maybe she sold that painting because he gave it to her and she doesn’t want it anymore?
That’s what I figured. Angelina is *not* hurting for money. She can spend millions if she wants to try to protect her kids. She probably noticed it for the first time in years and didn’t want the reminder of a nightmare partner. Also, that painting is fairly boring… just my opinion… and Churchill was an awful racist.
They say “very nasty ones keep going and Angelina changing attorneys is an indication that she needs to get her own way and isn’t willing to give up. It’s almost worse when people have the money because they’ll just keep fighting. Other people run out of money but Angelina has the means to keep paying for lawyers.’”
Well, how “cute” of them, the woman just “needs to get her own way”. Now, admittedly we don’t know the whole story, BUT if I was divorcing my husband and he was abusive to my kid, you better believe I wouldn’t give up the custody battle. And it would have ZERO to do with “needing to get my own way” and everything to do with wanting my kid to be safe. This hot take is utter sexist BS.
I’ve actually seen this often in family court. Judges’ current theory of custody is to preserve the relationship with both parents unless abuse is proven. Like, it’s very very difficult to cut one parent out of kids’ lives. One parent doesn’t want to believe that and will go through lawyers until one tells them what they want to hear. There’s always a lawyer who will swear they can get what the client wants done. It’s actually pretty heartbreaking and one of the reasons that I moved on from family practice.
I could never do family law. It just seems like a career of heartbreak. I know a lawyer who does a LOT of pro bono family law– the sh-t she’s seen is horrendous. Like, incest level horrendous.
@Laraw it’s terrible. There is so much more incest than people realize. The most common thing is stepfathers/mothers’ boyfriends, but I have seen cases of biological fathers and brothers preying on the daughters in the house not infrequently. It’s vile.
As one would expect from a Daily Fail-article it is a pile of misogynistic trash blaming the woman.