Miraval Deposition Win for Pitt as Twins Near 18

A Michigan court has handed Brad Pitt a procedural win in his ongoing Château Miraval lawsuit, ordering Stoli Group's former general counsel to sit for a fresh deposition and answer 33 questions that lawyers had previously blocked. The ruling arrives as the last custody chapter of the Pitt-Jolie split moves toward a quiet, calendar-driven close.

The Deposition Ruling and What the Judge Found

The dispute centers on Angelina Jolie's 2021 sale of her stake in the Château Miraval winery, a move Pitt's legal team has contested in a lawsuit filed in 2022. During an earlier deposition, lawyers for the Stoli Group intervened to block testimony from Todd Culyba, who served as Stoli's general counsel at the time of the transaction.

The Michigan judge ruled that those objections were improper. According to reporting on the ruling, the court determined that attorney-client privilege does not extend to the commercial and business aspects of the sale itself — only to genuinely privileged legal communications. Culyba is now ordered to answer the 33 blocked questions along with any related follow-up queries.

Pitt's team has been specifically pursuing answers about the involvement of Yuri Shefler, Stoli's ultimate beneficial owner, in arranging or facilitating the deal. Whether and how Shefler participated remains what Pitt's lawyers are trying to establish — it is not a settled fact in the record.

A Split Scorecard Across Two Courts

The Michigan ruling is not the only recent development in the Miraval litigation. Jolie recorded a win of her own in a separate proceeding before a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, who denied Pitt's bid to compel the handover of her private emails. In that instance, the court upheld Jolie's attorney-client privilege claims — drawing a distinction between the kind of business communications the Michigan court found unprotected and genuinely privileged lawyer-client correspondence.

The two rulings underscore how the litigation is playing out across different jurisdictions, with each side notching procedural gains on different legal questions. The 2022 winery lawsuit remains active.

The Custody Chapter That Time Will Close

Separate from the winery dispute, the final family-law thread of the eight-year Pitt-Jolie divorce is nearing its end through the simplest of mechanisms: the twins Knox and Vivienne, currently 17, are approaching their 18th birthdays. Once they turn 18, they will age out of the court's jurisdiction for child custody and support matters, effectively concluding that portion of a separation that began in 2016 and was formally finalised in December 2024.

The formal divorce took eight years to complete. The Château Miraval lawsuit, now in its fourth year, has no equivalent automatic endpoint — and the deposition ordered this week suggests the evidentiary phase still has ground to cover.