Overview
- Zahara Marley Jolie‑Pitt and Maddox Chivan Jolie‑Pitt each published the required four weekly notices in the Los Angeles Daily Journal to seek removal of “Pitt” from their legal surnames, with the notices running in June and early July.
- Court records show Maddox’s name‑change hearing is set for September 14 and Zahara’s for September 28, and a judge may approve the petitions at those hearings if no written objections are filed.
- California law requires publication in a newspaper of general circulation for four consecutive weeks before a name‑change hearing so the public and any interested party can object, and these notices do not finalize a change on their own.
- Several siblings have already stopped using or legally removed ‘Pitt’—Shiloh completed a legal change in 2024 and Vivienne has used Jolie professionally—so these filings continue a pattern of the children publicly and legally distancing from the Pitt surname.
- Coverage notes competing perspectives: anonymous sources close to Brad Pitt characterize the moves as the result of parental alienation, while public records and family appearances show the children have already been using Jolie and cited personal reasons for the changes, a development that deepens a long‑running family rift that began after the couple’s 2016 split.