In the same week that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s younger children, Vivienne and Knox, reached adulthood and expressed a desire to drop their father’s surname, it is now known that their older siblings are moving forward with the legal process to delete the Pitt name from their lives. Both Maddox, the couple’s eldest at 24, and Zahara, 21 — the oldest of the girls and third of the siblings after Pax, 22 — have opted to pursue formal proceedings.
In California, the process to change one’s surname is neither very costly nor difficult, but it does require following a series of specific steps. One of those is the obligation to publish the name-change petition in a local English-language newspaper for four consecutive weeks. Both of them have done so and therefore will be able to change their names legally in mid-September. The move confirms that, since their parents’ separation 10 years ago, they have all consistently sided with the actress.
Maddox, the firstborn, is in the middle of the change. Outlets such as USA Today and TMZ reported at the end of May that he had begun the paperwork, citing “personal” reasons. The young man, born in August 2001 in Cambodia and first adopted by Jolie and later by Pitt, had already been informally credited with the Jolie surname in films such as Couture and Maria, which starred his mother and on which he worked as an assistant director. In the credits he appeared as Maddox Jolie or Maddox Jolie-Pitt. Now, after publishing the petition in a local newspaper last week, he will ask to be called Maddox Chivan Jolie.
The court received proof of publication in the local paper Los Angeles Daily Journal on July 7, together with the corresponding copies. The legal documents show the petition began on May 28 and that that newspaper published his petition on June 10, 17 and 24, and on July 1. They also show his hearing will take place on September 14, 2026, at 8.30 am Pacific Time.
Maddox’s path has run parallel to his sister’s. Zahara Jolie-Pitt (that is her name for now) began the process in June. The young woman published the petition in the same Los Angeles Daily Journal on June 16, 23 and 30 and also on July 7. Therefore, if no objections are filed, her hearing is set for September 28, when she will officially become Zahara Marley Jolie.
Zahara is the third of the couple’s six children and was adopted in Ethiopia in the summer of 2005, just seven months after she was born. During an event at her college, Spelman, she introduced herself to classmates under the name she has now requested, Zahara Marley Jolie. Her brother Pax, 23, is older than her by birth—he was born in November 2003—but joined the family later, in 2007, after being adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam at age three. Although he has publicly renounced his father — in fact, he is the only one to have done so in an Instagram post — Pax has not changed his surname because he is 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 known only by the surname Jolie. She succeeded a few months later, in August of that year, becoming the first member of the family to make it official. Only the younger twins, Knox and Vivienne, remained; they reached adulthood on Sunday, July 12, 2026. They have also publicly expressed an interest in removing Pitt from their names. They have yet to do so legally.
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