Maddox Jolie Becomes Latest Child to Distance Himself From Brad Pitt’s Name

Maddox Jolie has officially dropped Brad Pitt’s surname, becoming the latest of Angelina Jolie and Pitt’s six children to distance himself from his father’s name formally.

A Los Angeles County judge approved the 25-year-old’s request Monday, September 14, after no objections were filed against the petition. He will now legally be known as Maddox Chivan Jolie rather than Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt.

A hearing was held on Monday on Maddox’s petition for a name change … and the judge signed off on the request due to no objections being made. Maddox will now be known as Maddox Jolie.

TMZ

Maddox first filed for the change in May, citing personal reasons. The decision was hardly without warning. He had already been using Jolie professionally, including while working as an assistant director on his mother’s film Couture. What makes the latest development difficult to dismiss as an isolated choice is the growing pattern within the family.

Another Jolie Child Makes It Official

Shiloh became the first of the six siblings to legally remove Pitt from her surname when a judge approved her request in August 2024.

Zahara has also petitioned to become Zahara Marley Jolie, with a hearing scheduled for September 28. Vivienne has taken steps toward changing her surname, while several of the children have already publicly used Jolie without Pitt attached.

These remain individual decisions, and the children have largely avoided publicly explaining their reasons. But when several adult children independently distance themselves from the same surname, repeatedly blaming their mother becomes an increasingly unconvincing answer.

TMZ reported that sources close to Pitt blame Angelina Jolie for pushing the children away from him over the years. That explanation places responsibility once again on Jolie while saying considerably less about why the children themselves might have reached their own conclusions.

They are no longer small children whose identities can reasonably be reduced to a custody dispute between two parents. Maddox is 25. Shiloh is 20. Zahara is 21. They are adults capable of deciding which relationships and names they want to carry into adulthood.

The History Cannot Simply Be Erased

The family breakdown followed the September 14, 2016 private-plane incident that preceded Jolie filing for divorce five days later.

Jolie later made serious allegations about Pitt’s behaviour during the flight. The FBI reviewed what happened but did not pursue further investigation or file charges, while the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services also closed its investigation without a finding of abuse. Those outcomes remain an important part of the factual record.

But no criminal charge can tell the public what individual family members experienced emotionally or why adult children later choose distance.

In fact, Maddox’s name change was approved exactly ten years after the September 14, 2016 flight. There is no evidence that he deliberately chose the anniversary, but the coincidence gives an already significant family development an extraordinary sense of finality.

Pitt has spoken publicly in the years since the divorce about giving up alcohol and confronting problems in his life. Yet the recurring attempts by unnamed sources to frame Jolie as the driving force behind the estrangement risk ignoring the most obvious people in this story: the children.

Whatever happened inside the Jolie-Pitt family belongs ultimately to them. Maddox did not merely stop using his father’s surname casually. He filed paperwork, completed California’s required public-notice process, attended the legal proceedings and obtained a judge’s approval. No one objected. For Maddox Chivan Jolie, the name he had already chosen to use is now officially his own.