Brad Pitt’s kids dispute his claim of ‘parental alienation’ by Angelina Jolie

Brad Pitt’s children, particularly the four who have taken legal steps to drop his last name from their own, would apparently like it to be known that they were not gaslit by their mother Angelina Jolie into turning against him.

There was no “parental alienation” as Pitt as long claimed, a source close to Jolie told People.

“If people knew the whole truth, they would have more sympathy for the children and respect them,” the source said. “The fact they aren’t speaking ill or sharing things publicly only shows their decency.”

So, Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, and 18-year-old twins, Knox and Vivienne, are not directly speaking out themselves about their father because they are “decent.” But their mother, 51, clearly wants to present a positive spin on her side in this long, contentious family drama. That’s why her representative is speaking to People, following news this week that Vivienne filed a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court, requesting that her legal name be changed from Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt to Vivienne Marcheline Jolie.

Vivienne filed her petition shortly after she turned 18, and she has become the fourth of Pitt’s children to separate herself from the Academy Award winner in such a public, legal way.

That same source insisted to People that Jolie is no longer angry at her 62-year-old ex-husband. “She just wants everyone to heal,” the source said.

Pitt declined to respond to news of Vivienne’s legal move, but sources close to him have previously claimed that Jolie worked to alienate his children from him.

“It’s sad to see someone repeatedly publicize their successful alienation of their children from the other parent,” a source close to Pitt recently told People.

A Pitt source similarly told the Daily Mail: “There has been a campaign of alienation (by Jolie) which has been successful. The antagonism is huge. He has been alienated from the kids completely. It is devastating to him.”

Parental alienation is a dynamic that occurs when a child refuses to have a relationship with a parent due to manipulation by the other parent, such as by conveying of exaggerated or false information, as Psychology Today explains. The situation most often arises during a divorce or custody battle, but it can also happen in intact families.

The perpetrator of parental alienation can employ a variety of tactics, including when one parent tells the child that the other parent hates the child or that the other parent is abusive, Psychology Today also said. The perpetrator also may blame the other parent for the collapse of the marriage, punish the child for wanting to pursue a relationship with that parent or move away so that maintaining a relationship becomes extremely difficult.

Pitt didn’t do himself any favors early on in the family drama. He reportedly forced Jolie to file for divorce in September 2016 by allegedly drinking too much and becoming violent with her and several of their children during a private plane ride back to the United States from the couple’s Chateau Miraval winery and estate in France. A number of reports said that Maddox, then 15, was the main focus of Pitt’s aggression on the flight.

Child welfare officials investigated the incident and cleared Pitt of any wrongdoing. The “F1” star also denied ever being abusive, though he gave multiple interviews in subsequent years, acknowledging that he had to overcome problems with alcohol and learn to better control his anger.

It’s been reported that Maddox immediately distanced himself from his father after that infamous plane flight. Maddox’s connection with his mother has always run deeper, given that she adopted him on her own from an orphanage in Cambodia in 2002 when he was 7 months old. On her own, Jolie also adopted Pax and Zahara from Vietnam and Ethiopia, respectively. Pitt later joined in adopting the three older children, while he and Jolie then had three biological children, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne.

The focus on Pitt’s problems with his children ramped up in 2023 when it became known that Pax allegedly called him a “world-class (expletive)” and an “awful human being” in a resurfaced 2020 social media post. In that post, Pax also accused his father of making his younger siblings “tremble in fear.”

The following year, Shiloh became the first of Pitt’s children to legally drop his surname. A few months later, a source told People that Brad “has virtually no contact with the adult kids.”

At this time, an insider also told People that Pitt still had limited contact Vivienne and Knox, though Vivienne didn’t use the “Pitt” surname in her 2024 Playbill credit for the Broadway musical “The Outsiders,” which her mother produced.

As of now, Zahara also is seeking to legally change her name to Zahara Marley Jolie, while Maddox is requesting to become Maddox Chivan Jolie. These two recently published notices, as legally required, which revealed their intentions to drop Pitt from their last names.

It’s not known if Pax and Knox will follow their siblings in dropping their father’s surname. A source told the Daily Mail that Pitt considers his relationship with Pax “unfixable,” while the actor is not planning any outreach to either of his adopted sons.

“Pax and Maddox have made it abundantly clear how they feel and Brad has nothing to say about either of them,” the Daily Mail source said.

As for his other children, the Daily Mail source said Pitt “holds out hope that the others will one day come around. Time heals wounds.”

But in an interview with the Daily Mail, a source close to Jolie hit back at her ex-husband and said: “Brad continues to play the victim. His fractured relationship with his children is a direct result of how he has treated them.”