A Los Angeles judge approved 21-year-old Zahara’s petition to legally change her name from Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, making her the latest of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s six children to shed their father’s surname in court.
Judge Virginia Keeny presided at Los Angeles Superior Court’s Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Zahara’s attorney, Peter Kenneth Levine, appeared remotely for the morning hearing. Nobody showed up to fight it, and nobody had filed anything in writing to try.
“There being no objections, the petition for change of name is granted,” the Sept. 28 minute order states. The decree was signed and filed the same day.
A Petition Filed in June
Zahara began the process in June, filing a petition that reportedly cited personal reasons. California law required her to advertise the request, and notices of the proposed change ran in the Los Angeles Daily Journal on June 16, June 23, June 30 and July 7. Each notice opened a window for anyone who objected to submit a written challenge before the hearing. None was filed.
Those advertisements surfaced publicly more than two months before the ruling, when it emerged that Zahara and her brother Maddox had each taken out newspaper notices announcing their intention to drop “Pitt.”
Dueling Responses From Both Camps
The ruling drew sharply different reactions from people close to each parent. A source close to Pitt described the decision as one more chapter in what the source characterized as total parental alienation, and framed it as an attempt to draw attention away from the actor’s professional success. Over the past decade, that source said, only one side of the family has publicly discussed the children or tried to use them as leverage.
A source close to Jolie pushed back. “Today’s hearing was required by law and scheduled months ago by the L.A. court system,” the source said, calling it a new low for Pitt’s camp to float a conspiracy theory, refuse responsibility for his conduct and target his own daughter. The source added that Zahara has declined to air the details of his behavior publicly.
Siblings Who Made the Same Move
Shiloh was the first sibling to make the change legally, filing her petition shortly after turning 18 in May 2024 and winning approval later that year. Maddox, 25, filed his own petition in May, and a Los Angeles judge approved it Sept. 14, changing his legal name from Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt to Maddox Chivan Jolie. Vivienne has petitioned to become Vivienne Marcheline Jolie, with a hearing scheduled for November. Knox left his father’s surname off his high school diploma.
None of the siblings has publicly spelled out a reason beyond what appears in the court documents. Each waited until reaching the age at which the filing could be made independently.
For Zahara, the paperwork trailed the practice by years. In May, she was introduced as Zahara Marley Jolie while accepting her diploma at Spelman College in Atlanta, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, although the official commencement program still listed her as Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt. In November 2023, she introduced herself the same way during her induction into Spelman’s Mu Pi chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
A Surname Approved in 2006
The hyphen itself arrived by court order. Zahara was born in Ethiopia in January 2005 and adopted by Jolie later that year. In early 2006, a California judge approved changing her surname from Jolie to Jolie-Pitt as Pitt formally adopted her. Twenty years on, a different California judge undid it.
The family’s legal history has been long and public. Jolie filed for divorce in 2016 following a private-plane incident involving the family that became the subject of investigations, and the couple spent years litigating the split before reaching a settlement in 2024. The comparison to Jolie’s own history has not gone unnoticed either: in 2002, she legally dropped “Voight” from her name, changing it from Angelina Jolie Voight to Angelina Jolie after becoming estranged from her father, actor Jon Voight.
Jolie and Pitt remain in a legal dispute over their French winery, Château Miraval. The next family court date on the calendar belongs to Vivienne, whose hearing is set for November.
