Ivan Marinkovic Blames Goca Trzan for Lena's Surname Change

Ivan Marinkovic has spoken again about his daughter Lena and her decision to take her mother’s surname instead of his, the singer Goca Trzan. In a statement for the show Premijera Vikend Specijal, aired on August 30, he says the move did not surprise him, but that in his view there is no justified reason for it. As before, he put the blame on his ex wife.

Lena, daughter of Ivan Marinkovic and Goca Trzan, was born in 2007 and is now an adult. She first revealed the surname change on her own TikTok profile, where Lena Marinkovic now appears as Lena Trzan. That post set off a new round of statements between father and daughter, and this time the father was more direct than ever.

What Marinkovic Told Premijera

Marinkovic said he had expected the surname change.

Given that I was prepared for it, it wasn’t a big surprise to me, because I knew people were talking about it somewhere. As her real, biological father, I am absolutely disappointed, because there is no real reason for it.

He then pointed the blame straight at Goca Trzan.

Her mother is to blame for that, that is, Gordana Trzan, who worked chaotically and systematically to completely erase me as a person.

This is not Marinkovic’s first statement on the subject. In an earlier one, published on August 24, so a few days before his appearance on Premijera, he said the surname change does not alter anything biologically.

“She can change her surname six times, I am still her only real biological father,” he said.

In that same earlier statement, he also joked about the possibility that Lena could have taken the surname of her stepfather, the musician Rasa Novakovic, to whom Goca Trzan is married.

“As far as I know, Trzan isn’t exactly an Orthodox surname,” he said.

That comment was not the first time Marinkovic had brought up Rasa Novakovic since the conflict over Lena flared up again. In the same statement, alongside criticism of Novakovic, he added the following.

I should have paid Rasa child support back then, to get the kid raised properly. Instead, the guy just landed himself a free ride.

Behind that line, carried by Informer, sits a clear message: the father claims that Novakovic has, in his view, effectively stepped into the parental role he says he lost.

Lena: “He Disappointed Me”

Lena herself has spoken about her relationship with her father before, and her statement differs in tone from his. She said briefly that he disappointed her with his actions.

“He disappointed me, everything could have been different,” she said.

That sentence, short as it is, remains Lena’s only public reaction so far to the accusations her father has been making in recent weeks. Unlike Marinkovic, who has given longer statements to several outlets, Lena has addressed the relationship with her father publicly only with that one comment.

Timeline

The conflict between Ivan Marinkovic and Goca Trzan over daughter Lena has run for years, and it took a new turn in recent weeks. First, Lena changed her surname from Marinkovic to Trzan on social media. Then, on August 24, came Marinkovic’s first statement, in which he announced that the surname change changes nothing biologically and, in a joking tone, also touched on Rasa Novakovic’s surname. Six days later, on August 30, Marinkovic went a step further on Premijera Vikend Specijal and directly named Goca Trzan as the person who, in his words, worked systematically to push him out of Lena’s picture of her family.