Brad Pitt‘s last name is disappearing from his own family child by child, and now in rapid succession.
Just days after 24-year-old Maddox Jolie filed a petition in May 2026 to legally remove “Pitt” from his surname, his younger sister Zahara, 21, has done the same.
Court documents obtained by TMZ and confirmed by E! News reveal that Zahara filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on April 28, 2026, requesting that her legal name be changed from Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie.
A hearing has been scheduled for September 28, 2026, at which point she will be required to explain her decision to a judge. No reasoning was offered in the paperwork itself.
The near-simultaneous filings from two of the couple’s adult children mark a striking acceleration in what has become a years-long, family-wide distancing from the Oscar-winning actor’s name. Shiloh, now 20, was the first to take legal action, filing to drop “Pitt” on her 18th birthday in May 2024. That petition was subsequently granted.
Now, within a span of weeks in the spring of 2026 — months after Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s divorce was formally finalized in December 2024 — two more of their six children have followed in her footsteps.
The timing is difficult to overlook. While none of the children have publicly explained their decisions, the legal filings from Maddox and Zahara arrived in the wake of a divorce settlement that concluded nearly a decade of bitter litigation between their parents, one that included highly publicized disputes over a French winery, allegations of abuse, and years of reported estrangement between Pitt and several of his children.
The finalization of that legal chapter appears to have accelerated a separate, deeply personal one.
Zahara had been signaling the change informally for years. In late 2023, during her induction into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Spelman College in Atlanta, she introduced herself on camera as “Zahara Marley Jolie,” omitting her father’s name entirely.
At her college graduation on May 17, 2026 — a ceremony Brad Pitt did not attend and reportedly did not reach out to his daughter about — her name was listed in the printed commencement program as Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt, but when she walked across the stage to receive her Bachelor of Arts in psychology, she was announced simply as Zahara Marley Jolie.
The legal filing had already been signed nine days earlier.
Of the couple’s six children — Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and twins Knox and Vivienne, both 17 — three have now formally initiated or completed the legal process of removing “Pitt” from their names.
Vivienne and Maddox had previously dropped the surname in professional credits, with Maddox listed as Maddox Jolie in the credits of his mother’s 2025 film Couture, on which he served as an assistant director.
Vivienne was credited as Vivienne Jolie in the Playbill for the Broadway production of The Outsiders, which she co-produced with her mother.
Pitt’s representatives have not responded to requests for comment regarding Zahara’s filing.
