Zahara Jolie-Pitt ran a four-week newspaper notice to legally drop her father's last name
California makes you publish an ad daring people to object. She published it, and the hearing is September 28.
Spearson Cruz
July 13, 2026Zahara Jolie-Pitt has spent years quietly not using her father's last name. Now she has done the part that actually counts with a judge: she ran a legal notice in a newspaper, four weeks straight, telling anyone who wants to stop her to please put it in writing.
TMZ obtained the court documents on Monday. They show the 21-year-old completed one of California's requirements for a legal name change by publishing notice of her petition in the Los Angeles Daily Journal on June 16, June 23, June 30 and July 7. She filed last month to go from Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie. The hearing is set for September 28, and if nobody objects, a judge can sign off and that is that.
The newspaper ad is a real thing, not a flex
If you have never changed your name in California, the publication step reads like a bit. You want a new surname, so you buy space in a legal newspaper and dare the public to fight you about it. It is a genuine requirement, though. The state generally makes a petitioner run the notice once a week for four consecutive weeks in a court-approved paper so anyone with an objection has a window to file one. Then the judge decides.
The odds of a stranger reading the Daily Journal legal notices and mounting a formal challenge to a 21-year-old's surname are somewhere between slim and nonexistent. But the box gets checked, and Zahara checked it.
She has been Zahara Jolie in practice for a while
None of this is a surprise reveal. She introduced herself using only "Jolie" when she joined Alpha Kappa Alpha at Spelman College in 2023, and she used only "Jolie" when she graduated in May. The court filing is the paperwork catching up to how she already signs her name.
She is also not the first one in the house to do it. Shiloh filed on her 18th birthday in 2024 and published a similar legal notice before dropping "Pitt" for good. Maddox and Vivienne have both stopped using the name publicly. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt share six kids: Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 17-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. The Pitt half of the hyphen is having a rough decade.
Brad's side is not thrilled, per Brad's side
A source described as close to Brad Pitt gave TMZ the reaction, and it is not a shrug. They "believe Angelina has caused the rift between Brad and the children," and called this "just the latest chapter in the very sad and never-ending campaign to alienate children from their father."
Treat that for what it is: an anonymous person in one camp characterizing the other camp, given to a gossip outlet. It is not a finding of fact, and neither Jolie nor Zahara has responded to it. Zahara herself has not publicly explained the filing at all. She filled out forms, bought four weeks of newspaper space and got a court date, which is a fairly quiet way to make a loud point.
Neither Jolie nor Pitt has commented on the record.
What happens next
September 28 in Los Angeles. If no written opposition lands before then, the judge approves it and Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt becomes Zahara Marley Jolie in the eyes of the state, matching what her diploma, her sorority and everyone who has met her already say.