’s legal battle to drop her dad, ’s last name has been delayed until August.
“Unfortunately, the court was unable to complete the background check ahead of today’s hearing, so the hearing was rescheduled for August 19. This is normal,” Shiloh’s attorney, , said in a statement to Us Weekly on Monday, July 29. “Everyone undergoing a name-change request needs to have a background check conducted by the court clerk, and because of clerical error, Shiloh’s hearing has been continued to a new date.”
Shiloh, who is the daughter of Pitt, 60, and , filed on her 18th birthday May to legally remove Pitt from her name. At the time, a source exclusively told Us in June that Shiloh hired and paid for her own lawyer.
An additional insider told Us that Pitt was “devastated” by Shiloh’s decision. “To him, it was more than a change of name — it was a symbol of a deeper estrangement that has been brewing for years,” the source said.
In order to legally change a person’s name in California, a person must publish legal forms in a newspaper for one month before a judge can approve a petition to change their name, per California law. Once the document is published, the request will then show up in the legal notice section of the paper.
Shiloh posted her announcement in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month, noting that she intends to officially change her name to Shiloh Nouvel Jolie.
“As Shiloh’s attorney, I am required to publish a legal notice because the law in California requires that of anyone who wants to change their name,” Levine told Us in a statement at the time. “That legal notice was published in the Los Angeles Times, as is required.”
In addition to Shiloh, Jolie, 49, and Pitt are the parents of Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, and 15-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox. Shiloh is the third sibling to no longer go by their father’s moniker.
In November 2023, Shiloh’s older sister, Zahara, introduced herself as Zahara Marley Jolie while she was attending a ceremony for her sorority at Spelman College. Six months later, the former couple’s youngest daughter, Vivienne, was credited professionally as Vivienne Jolie in the playbill for the Broadway musical The Outsiders. Vivienne coproduced the show with her mother.
The decision for three of Pitt’s children to drop his surname comes amid his ongoing divorce with Jolie. The pair, who wed in 2014 after nine years together, split in late 2016. Jolie called it quits with Pitt following the twosome’s infamous plane altercation with their children. Pitt was investigated for child abuse and subsequently cleared.
The exes were legally declared single in 2019, however, their divorce has yet to be finalized as they fight over ownership of their shared winery Chateau Miraval and custody of their minor children.
In 2022, Pitt sued Jolie claiming that she breached their contract by selling her Chateau Miraval stake the year before to a third party without his consent. He alleged that she did it in an attempt to “undermine [his] investment.” Later that year, Jolie’s lawyers filed a motion claiming that Pitt would not buy Jolie’s shares in the wine company unless she signed a mutual NDA. In the same court docs, Jolie accused Pitt of trying to conceal his “physical abuse” toward her before the plane incident. Pitt’s lawyers denied the allegations.
In May, a judge subsequently ruled in Pitt’s favor for Jolie to produce every NDA agreement that she signed with a third party between 2014 and 2022 within a 60-day deadline.
“Those actions are central to these proceedings. We are not at all surprised Mr. Pitt is afraid to turn over the documents demonstrating these facts,” Jolie’s attorney said in a new statement to Us in July. “While Angelina again asks Mr. Pitt to end the fighting and finally put their family on a clear path toward healing, unless Mr. Pitt withdraws his lawsuit, Angelina has no choice but to obtain the evidence necessary to prove his allegations wrong.”
With reporting by Andrea Simpson
