In the same week that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s youngest children, Vivienne and Knox, have come of age and expressed their desire to leave behind their father’s surname, it is now known that their older siblings have decided to carry out the entire complex legal process and remove the Pitt name from their lives. Both Maddox, the eldest son of the actor couple, 24 years old, and Zahara, 21 — the eldest of the girls, and third after Pax, 22 — have decided to follow the formal procedure to remove their father’s surname.
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In California, the process to change surnames is not very expensive nor does it have many obstacles, but there are a series of specific legal steps that must be followed. One of them is the obligation to publish the name change request in a local newspaper in English, publicly, for four consecutive weeks. And both have done so, and therefore will be able to legally change their name by mid-September. This confirms that, since their parents’ separation 10 years ago, they have always sided with the actress.
Maddox, the firstborn, is in the midst of the change process. Media such as USA Today and TMZ reported at the end of May that he had started all the paperwork, citing “personal” reasons. The young man, born in August 2001 in Cambodia and first adopted by Jolie and then by Pitt, had already been seen informally with the surname Jolie in the credits of films like Couture or Maria, starring his mother and in which he collaborated as an assistant director. In the credits, he appeared as Maddox Jolie or Maddox Jolie-Pitt. Now, after publishing the request in a local newspaper last week, he will ask to be called Maddox Chivan Jolie.
The court received proof of publication of his request in the local newspaper Los Angeles Daily Journal on the 7th, along with the corresponding copies. The legal documents show that the request started on May 28 and that the newspaper published his intentions on June 10, 17, and 24, as well as July 1. It also shows that his hearing will take place on September 14, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time.
Maddox’s path has run parallel to that of his sister. Zahara Jolie-Pitt (that is her name for now) started the process in June. The young woman published the request in the same newspaper Los Angeles Daily Journal on June 16, 23, and 30 and also on July 7. Therefore, if no objections are raised, her hearing is set for September 28, when Zahara will become Zahara Marley Jolie.
Zahara is the third of the six children of the couple, and was adopted in Ethiopia in the summer of 2005, just seven months after she was born. During an event at her university, Spelman College, she already introduced herself to her classmates under the name she has now requested, Zahara Marley Jolie. Her brother Pax, 23 years old, is older than her, having been born in November 2003, but he joined the family later, in 2007, as he was adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam when he was three years old. Although he has disavowed his father — in fact, he is the only one to have done so publicly, in an Instagram post — Pax has not changed his surname because he is very close to his paternal uncles and cousins.
Shiloh, the couple’s first biological daughter, turned 18 in May 2024 and at that time formally asked the court to be surnamed only Jolie. She achieved this a few months later, in August of the same year, being the first in the clan to make it official. Only the younger siblings, the twins Knox and Vivienne, who came of age last Sunday, July 12, remain. But they have also already publicly shown their interest in removing Pitt from their lives. They just need to do it legally.
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