On Order: A Brangelina Split with Whipped Cream and a Cherry on Top!

Last week, Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt. People keep asking me what I think…Why do so many care about this breakup?

Like just about everyone in the world last week, I learned that the “golden couple,” Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, are divorcing.

Many people asked if I “heard the news!” People seem devastated. Were they asking me with such concern because Brad and Angelina are people in my circle of friends or parents of my children’s friends; or simply because I am a divorce attorney?

Personally, I’ve never met Brad and Angelina and I don’t believe our children’s paths have crossed. So, as a family law attorney, what do I think?
First, I began to realize the ripples of effect this news is having across the American public. I pondered why, exactly, so many people feel crushed, disappointed, sad or otherwise bereft about the announced split of two superstars.

Marriage is challenging even in its best circumstances. People fight over finances, they have different parenting perspectives.

Couples start out at one age in love and enamored and over time, change and evolve as all people do, sometimes finding they don’t exactly change together.

It’s hard to maintain romance over the years, period. Even harder still when you have small children to tend to – and when you have six between the ages of 8 and 15, well, things can only get tougher.

But more than that, “Brangenlina” live on the world stage. Granted, they chose to shine the spotlight on their life. Most couples prize their privacy and still have a rough go at making marriage work, but when you’re a Hollywood couple, everyone’s watching and the pressure can grow pretty intense.

I prefer to look at their breakup with some perspective. First, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were married for only two years, the typical time that a new marriage tends to fall apart if it’s not meant to be, but they were together as a couple for a decade.

Ten years. That’s not insignificant.

In America, we’ve been trained to believe that any dissolution of a marriage is a disgrace, a failure, a disappointment, but is that really the truth?

I’d like to suggest that perhaps some relationships are meant to stay the lifelong course while others have their time and then their time is up, and it’s all ok.

Ten years isn’t bad. True, they have six little lives to disrupt with this divorce, and that’s unfortunate.

Maddox, Zahara and Pax were already brought from one life to another when they were adopted, and now they’ll have to adjust to a new status quo.

But Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne, the pair’s biological offspring? I do believe that the roughest part of a divorce is the impact on children.

Living life in the public eye does not make marriage easier.

After all, children don’t ask to be born, and when they are, I believe they deserve every chance at success and happiness, despite the trivialities and trials adults put in their path.In this CNN story, the question on the lawyers’ table isn’t about who gets what money, property or fame. It’s about what will happen to the children – will there be a tug-of-war?

When she filed for divorce, Angelina Jolie asked for joint legal custody, but sole physical custody of all the kids, with only visitation With what we know so far, which isn’t much, this has chaos and heartbreak written all over it.