Zahara Jolie-Pitt, the 21-year-old daughter of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, has completed a critical legal step in her effort to remove her father’s surname, with court documents filed July 9 showing she satisfied California’s publication requirement. She is seeking judicial approval to become Zahara Marley Jolie, with a hearing set for September 28.
Under California law, anyone seeking a legal name change must publish the petition in a local newspaper of general circulation for four weeks, giving the public a window to weigh in. Zahara’s announcements ran in consecutive editions of the Los Angeles Daily Journal on June 16, June 23, June 30 and July 7. Anyone opposing the change is required to submit a written objection before the final hearing.
A Pattern Among the Siblings
Zahara is not the first of the couple’s six children to step away from Pitt. In 2024, her sister Shiloh Jolie published a similar legal notice before officially dropping the name. Maddox Jolie-Pitt, 24, and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt have also stopped publicly using the surname in recent years. Pax Jolie-Pitt, 22, rounds out the siblings who have grown up in the glare of one of Hollywood’s most scrutinized breakups.
Zahara first filed her petition on June 4 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, and she signed it April 28 — just weeks before she graduated. The Spelman College graduate earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and walked at the May 17 commencement ceremony. When she was called to receive her diploma, she was announced as Zahara Marley Jolie, her father’s name already absent from the moment.
The proof of publication document reached the court just days before her youngest siblings, twins Knox and Vivienne, turned 18. That milestone matters beyond the paperwork, because it loosens ties that have kept the household anchored to California for years.
A Family Shaped by a Long Divorce
The name changes arrive against the backdrop of a divorce that dragged on for eight years before it was finalized in 2024. In 2021, nearly five years after Jolie filed, Pitt was granted joint custody of the children. That arrangement did not hold. When the judge overseeing the case was removed, the agreement reverted to a 2018 ruling that gave Jolie primary physical custody while Pitt retained custodial time and visitation rights over the minor children.
Those visitation rights have kept Jolie tethered to Los Angeles, requiring her to maintain a residence in the state. She has made no secret of her plans to leave once the last of her children reached adulthood. In a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she said she remains in the city because of the divorce but expects to depart once all her children turn 18, seeking privacy, peace and safety for her big family. She has said she intends to spend significant time in Cambodia, the birthplace of her son Maddox.
Neither parent has publicly addressed Zahara’s petition. But a source close to Pitt described the move as part of a broader estrangement, saying Angelina has caused a rift between Brad and the children in what the source called a campaign to alienate them from their father. Representatives for both Jolie and Pitt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jolie has previously spoken warmly about her daughter, whom she adopted from Ethiopia in 2005. Reflecting on their bond in a 2020 interview, she described Zahara as an extraordinary African woman whose connection to her home continent she stands back and admires.
Jolie adopted Maddox, born Aug. 5, 2001, in Battambang, Cambodia, as a single 26-year-old mother, and Pitt began the process to adopt him after the two started dating. Maddox later served as an executive producer on Jolie’s 2017 film First They Killed My Father, studied biochemistry at South Korea’s Yonsei University, and attended a state dinner at the White House in April 2023. Pax, born Nov. 29, 2003, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, spent three-and-a-half years in an orphanage in one room with 20 other children before joining the family; he voiced the character Yoo in Kung Fu Panda 3 in 2016.
For Jolie, the children’s steps toward independence have doubled as a source of renewal. In a June 17 interview, she said her fighting spirit had returned after a difficult stretch, crediting her older children for encouraging it. If the judge signs off in September, Zahara will officially become Zahara Marley Jolie — the latest of Pitt’s children to close the book on the surname.