Shiloh Jolie-Pitt officially drops Pitt from her last name

The daughter of actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has officially removed her father’s last name.

Shiloh Jolie, who initially petitioned to drop Pitt’s surname in May, submitted a request to the court this Monday to formalize the name change, according to court documents reviewed by The Times on Tuesday. She will now be legally recognized as Shiloh Nouvel Jolie, rather than Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt.

The “Kung Fu Panda 3” voice actor filed her petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court when she turned 18 in May and later published a notice regarding the name-change in the July 8 edition of The Times. Contrary to some media reports that suggested the young adult took out an ad to announce her departure from her father’s name publicly, this notice is actually part of a state legal procedure designed to verify the authenticity of name-change requests.

According to NBC News, Shiloh independently hired and paid for her own lawyer to handle the proceedings. Peter Levine, her attorney, previously commented to The Times that media outlets should exercise more caution in their reporting, especially when it involves a young adult making an independent decision following difficult circumstances, while simply following legal procedures.

Levine did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for additional comments on Tuesday.

The petition encountered a delay in July due to a clerical error that postponed Shiloh’s hearing. It was rescheduled for Monday, and TMZ reported that the petition was quietly granted.

Born on May 27, 2006, in Swakopmund, Namibia, Shiloh is the third-eldest child of the once-famous Hollywood pair and the eldest of their three biological children. Jolie and Pitt’s other children include Maddox, 23; Pax, 20; Zahara, 19; and twins Knox and Vivienne, 16. Although Jolie and Pitt’s divorce has not been fully settled, they were declared legally unmarried in 2019.

Shiloh’s younger sister Vivienne has also opted to remove Pitt from her last name, as evidenced by her name appearing sans Pitt in the Playbill for “The Outsiders.” Zahara, too, introduced herself without her father’s surname during a sorority presentation at Spelman College.

In September 2016, Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt following an alleged physical altercation during a private flight from Europe. Several of their children were reportedly also involved in the incident, according to an FBI report.

Details of this confrontation surfaced in a 2022 lawsuit filed by Jolie against the FBI. The alleged incident was also mentioned during the contentious legal battle over Chateau Miraval, the couple’s winemaking estate and former family home in the South of France, where they got married in 2014.

Brad Pitt has not publicly commented on his daughter’s legal name change. However, People reported that the “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” actor was “aware and upset” about the decision.

Source: Los Angeles Times.