Brad Pitt Wants the California Supreme Court to Review His Custody Case With Angelina Jolie
Brad Pitt is asking the California Supreme Court to reconsider a ruling in his custody case with former wife Angelina Jolie.
According to Entertainment Tonight, Pitt is taking steps to challenge an appellate court decision from July that removed the couple's private judge from their custody case. The decision was made after Pitt was granted joint custody of their five minor children — Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne — back in May.
Jolie had already asked an appellate court to remove Ouderkirk from the case at the time of his ruling. The Maleficent actor reportedly has no issues sharing custody but was upset that Ouderkirk, who previously married the couple and then got involved in the custody case in 2016, did not allow their children to testify in court.
In July, ET reported that the appellate court sided with Jolie. The decision stemmed from what was deemed an "ethical breach" because Ouderkirk did not disclose the depths of his professional relationship with Pitt's legal team. In doing so, the court vacated or eliminated his previous rulings.
Pitt's petition to the California Supreme Court takes issue with the appellate court's decision. Documents his legal team filed claim the ruling "effectively upended the constitutionally authorized temporary judging system in California."
His lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. opened up in a statement shared with ET. "We are seeking review in the California Supreme Court because the temporary judge, who had been appointed and repeatedly renewed by both sides, was improperly disqualified after providing a detailed, fact-based custodial decision, following a lengthy legal process with multiple witnesses and experts," he said.
Boustrous added that the decision will "cause irreparable harm to both the children and families involved in this case, and other families in other cases, by unnecessarily prolonging the resolution of these disputes in an already overburdened court system."
Robert A. Olson, Jolie's attorney, released a statement reinforcing the appellate court ruling and questioning Pitt's team for "clinging to this private judge who exhibited bias and refused statutorily required evidence." He noted that the Court of Appeal "unanimously refused to tolerate the ethical violations of the private judge who had heard custody matters, and correctly vacated that judge’s orders."
Jolie cited irreconcilable differences when she filed for divorce in 2016. The move came two years after she married Pitt in 2014.