This week on Legally Us, Rachael Bennett, a certified family law specialist and senior attorney at Sullivan Law & Associates, breaks down Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s son Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt dropping “Pitt” from his last name.
On May 28, Maddox, 24, filed to remove his father’s surname from his own, and if approved he will be legally known as “Maddox Chivan Jolie” in future.
“For an adult changing your last name, it’s actually pretty straightforward, but it does require a formal court order to change your name,” Bennett tells Us. “The process is pretty simple. The court’s going to set a hearing date and in many cases, the person may have to publish a public notice of the proposed name change in a local newspaper. The judge is going to decide, yes, there’s an improper purpose, or no, there’s no improper purpose, and then if everything’s green lit, the judge just signs off on the petition, and the name change is granted.”
Angelina, 51, and Pitt, 62, were married from 2014 to 2016 and have remained involved in a series of high-profile legal disputes since their separation.
The former couple share six children: Maddox, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 17-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox.
Four of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s six children have taken steps to remove “Pitt” from their names. After Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 citing “irreconcilable differences,” Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh and Vivienne have each distanced themselves — publicly or legally — from their famous father by changing their last names. (Jolie […]
Although all six children were originally known by the surname Jolie-Pitt, several have since chosen to distance themselves from the Pitt name following their parents’ split.
In June 2024, Zahara introduced herself as “Zahara Marley Jolie” during her induction into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. A month earlier, Vivienne was credited as “Vivienne Jolie” in the Playbill for The Outsiders, the Broadway production she helped work on.
Shiloh also dropped Pitt from her surname, filing a legal request to do so on her 18th birthday. The petition was approved later in 2024.
Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s request to legally change her name is likely to be granted and it could happen very soon. “Anyone can file to change their name if they’re 18 years old, and obviously, parents can do it for a minor,” legal expert Neama Rahmani, who is not involved in the request, exclusively told Us Weekly […]
“For an adult child a parent does not have any legal grounds to block the name change just because they don’t like it,” Bennett explains. “Once somebody is 18, they can file their own name change petition, and the parent doesn’t get any veto power, and really, the court’s not going to care about the impact the name change has on the parents, even if a parent may have an emotional reaction to it, they don’t have any legal input once their child’s an adult.”
A source previously told Us Pitt “feels most hurt out of everything that happened with Angie that his children don’t want a public association with his last name. It’s been very difficult.”
