Vivienne Jolie Pitt Seeks to Drop Pitt Surname
Vivienne Jolie Pitt, 18, has asked a Los Angeles court to legally use only the surname Jolie, nine days after turning 18. She is the third child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to take that step.
Vivienne Marcheline Jolie Pitt, the daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, is 18 years old and has formally begun the process of using only the surname Jolie going forward. She filed the petition with the Los Angeles County court on July 21, 2026, just nine days after turning 18, according to court documents cited by TheWrap.
In the filing, Vivienne asks that her name be legally changed from Vivienne Marcheline Jolie Pitt to Vivienne Marcheline Jolie. The documents list personal reasons, with no further explanation given. Her middle name, Marcheline, honors her maternal grandmother, Marcheline Bertrand, who died of ovarian and breast cancer in 2007. Vivienne had already stopped using the Pitt surname publicly back in 2024, while working with her mother on the Broadway adaptation of “The Outsiders,” where the program credited her simply as Vivienne Jolie.
California law requires a name change petition to be published in a newspaper before a court will schedule a hearing. The notice of Vivienne’s petition ran once a week in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, on July 24, July 31, August 7 and August 14. Anyone wishing to object must do so in writing, no later than two court days before the hearing, which is set for November 2, 2026. If no objection is filed by then, the court can grant the petition without further argument.
Have the other children also dropped the Pitt surname?
Vivienne is not the first in the family to take this route. Her sister Shiloh, 20, filed to drop the Pitt surname back in 2024, on the exact day of her 18th birthday, and the court granted her request that same year. Her brother Maddox, 25, has been pursuing the same process since May 2026, and her sister Zahara, 21, since June, with a hearing scheduled for September 28. Sources differ on the date of Maddox’s hearing: TheWrap reports September 14, while Kurir writes that no date has yet been set for him. Of the six children of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, only their son Pax, 22, and Vivienne’s twin brother Knox have not so far filed for the same change.
Shiloh’s case, the first in the sequence, carries a notable detail: according to a report by Entertainment Tonight at the time, she initiated the process and paid for her own attorney, without her parents’ help. The pattern has held for every one of the Jolie Pitt children since then. The petition follows soon after each child’s 18th birthday and goes through the same court process, including the newspaper notice.
Angelina Jolie is 51 and Brad Pitt is 62. Their marriage ended acrimoniously: Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016, and the couple legally became single in 2019. The last disputed issues, including the division of property, were not settled until a settlement reached in December 2024, eight years after the initial divorce filing.
Their divorce, according to TheWrap, is one of the longest and most contentious in Hollywood history. Jolie filed only two years after the wedding, following an alleged incident on a private plane during a flight from France to Los Angeles. She sought primary custody of the six children, and the former spouses spent years disputing custody and finances. Pitt was investigated over allegations tied to the incident on the plane, but no charges were ever filed.
Neither Pitt nor Jolie has publicly commented on their children’s petitions to change their surname. Representatives for Brad Pitt declined to comment when contacted by TheWrap, while representatives for Angelina Jolie did not immediately respond to the outlet’s inquiry.
