In the latest chapter of the highly publicized and fractured dynamics of the Jolie-Pitt family, Hollywood stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter, Zahara, has taken formal legal steps to distance herself from her father’s lineage.
The 21-year-old has officially filed a petition in the Superior Court of California to legally remove “Pitt” from her surname, requesting that her permanent legal identity be amended to Zahara Marley Jolie.
According to newly obtained court records, while the paperwork was processed in early June 2026, Zahara signed and submitted the request on April 28. The timing of her legal filing mirrors a broader pattern among her adult siblings. Just weeks prior to Zahara’s petition, her older brother, 24-year-old Maddox Jolie, also submitted a formal legal request to strip the Oscar-winning actor’s last name from his own, citing personal reasons. Following the court filing, a judge has scheduled an official hearing for September 28, 2026, where Zahara is expected to appear to formalize the request.
While this marks her first official foray into a court-ordered name transition, Zahara has spent the last few years dropping public hints about her preferred identity. Most recently, during her college graduation on May 17, 2026 where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Spelman College in Atlanta she was introduced aloud to the audience simply as “Zahara Marley Jolie,” intentionally omitting her father’s name despite how it was written on the official commencement program. She made headlines for a similar declaration during her sorority initiation video in late 2023.
Zahara is now the third child of the former power couple to legally petition for a surname alteration. Their 20-year-old daughter, Shiloh, legally dropped “Pitt” immediately after turning 18 in 2024, paying for her own independent legal counsel to execute the change. Additionally, 17-year-old Vivienne was notably credited as “Vivienne Jolie” rather than “Vivienne Jolie-Pitt” on the playbill for the Broadway musical The Outsiders, which she helped her mother produce.
Sources close to Brad Pitt have expressed that the continuous legal rejections from his adult children have been deeply upsetting for the actor, alleging that the ongoing estrangement is the result of a calculated alienation campaign following the couple’s highly volatile 2016 split and their subsequent custody battle, which was only finalized in December 2024. Conversely, insiders close to the children maintain that as independent adults, they are simply making their own personal decisions regarding their identities and futures.