Over the weekend we heard the maybe-shocking news that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s split was imminent. Notorious British tabloid News of the World claimed that the couple contacted a divorce attorney in Beverly Hills in early December to hash out the legal details of their breakup and that “An announcement of their separation is expected to be made soon.” Brad and Angelina are not married but they do have six children together and a massive fortune including multiple real estate holdings.

As Kaiser reported, News of The World pays good money for stories, but they’re definitely not known for their integrity and it’s possible the story was made up. People Magazine quotes “sources” who claim that Brad and Angelina are fine and that both are now based in LA working on their upcoming films. They were apart recently when Angelina went to NY to do a Vanity Fair photoshoot. One very interesting tidbit in People’s story is that pre-production has started on Brad’s film The Lost City of Z, in which Pitt plays a British explorer at the turn of the 20th century looking for a lost city in Brazil. The explorer, Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, sported a long goatee just like the one Brad Pitt is wearing. As of earlier this month, there was still no script for Lost City, but now that the movie is in pre-production, Pitt has the perfect excuse for his unkempt facial hair.

While reports are swirling that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are headed for a split, multiple sources close to the family tell PEOPLE that the rumors are false.

“Everything is fine” with the couple, who are parents to six kids, a source says.

Another source says the split reports, which were first published in a British tabloid, are “totally false.”

In recent weeks, it’s been business as usual for the busy couple – movie shoots, family outings, charity work – and several observers say they saw nothing amiss.

On Jan. 2, Pitt, 46, and Jolie, 34, shared a romantic dinner for two at the French restaurant Le Perigord. “You could tell they wanted to spend time alone and didn’t want to be bothered by anybody else,” says a source. “It was wonderful to see a couple so much in love.”

With filming wrapped, the two headed back to Los Angeles to work on pre-production for their upcoming movies: Jolie’s The Tourist and Pitt’s Lost City of Z. On Jan. 16, Pitt took their eldest son, Maddox, on a boys’ trip to the New Orleans Saints’ playoff game, while Jolie was spotted grocery shopping and dropping by an Apple Store in L.A. with daughters Zahara and Shiloh.

In the last few days, Jolie reportedly jetted to New York City for a Vanity Fair photo shoot, while Pitt stayed in L.A. to participate in friend George Clooney’s Hope for Haiti Now telethon. (Both Pitt and Jolie made major donations to the relief effort.) Pitt didn’t attend Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, where his Inglourious Basterds picked up the award for best ensemble cast.

[From People]

I think these two have problems like everyone else. They have six kids, they’re both juggling a bunch of career obligations and even with all that money and help it can’t be easy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they split up because they have a 50/50 chance like just about every other married/committed couple. If it was easy a higher percentage of people would stay married/together. Maybe it was smart of them not to make it official and more complicated than it needed to be.

Still, we don’t have a window onto their home life and have no idea what’s it’s like. There’s a whole industry built up around trying to squeeze out the details of the lives of the rich and famous. When there’s not much information there, the tabloids make it up. As the most famous couple of all, Brad and Angelina are subjected to the most false reports. This one had a whiff of truth to it to many people, probably because these two don’t take pains to deny tabloid stories unless they’ve reached a fever pitch.