When Your Kids Grow Up, Your Last Name Isn't Yours to Keep

Brad Pitt learned this week what family law has known for years: once your child turns 18, their surname stops being negotiable. On May 28, Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt, 24, filed to legally remove“Pitt”from his name, joining his siblings in distancing themselves from their father’s surname following his 2016 split from Angelina Jolie.

The process itself is straightforward. According to Rachael Bennett, a certified family law specialist and senior attorney at Sullivan Law&Associates, adults seeking a name change simply petition the court, attend a hearing, and potentially publish a public notice in local newspapers. The judge then decides whether there’s an improper purpose behind the request. If everything checks out, the order gets signed and the name change is granted. No parental veto power. No emotional exceptions.

“For an adult child a parent does not have any legal grounds to block the name change just because they don’t like it,”Bennett explains.“Once somebody is 18, they can file their own name change petition, and the parent doesn’t get any veto power, and really, the court’s not going to care about the impact the name change has on the parents, even if a parent may have an emotional reaction to it, they don’t have any legal input once their child’s an adult.”

Maddox isn’t the first in the family to make this move. His 21-year-old sister Zahara introduced herself as“Zahara Marley Jolie”during her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority induction in June 2024. Their 20-year-old sister Shiloh filed for her legal name change on her 18th birthday—a petition that was approved later in 2024. Even their 17-year-old sister Vivienne was credited as“Vivienne Jolie”in the Playbill for Broadway’s The Outsiders. The pattern is unmistakable, and legally, it’s entirely within their rights.

What makes this particularly poignant is the emotional toll it’s taken on Pitt. A source previously told Us that Pitt“feels most hurt out of everything that happened with Angie that his children don’t want a public association with his last name. It’s been very difficult.”It’s a sobering reminder that the law protects autonomy—rightly so—but it can’t shield anyone from the weight of rejection, no matter how justified that rejection might be.

The takeaway here isn’t just legal procedure. It’s about the irreducible right of young adults to define themselves on their own terms, even when it stings the people who raised them.