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Changing your name...help?
I'm taking my husband's last name, and I want to use my maiden name as my middle name (it's pretty unique). My issue is that I'm a little confused as to the process. Social Security says they can do the last name easily but changing the middle name takes a petition filed with the county court. Then I'd have to send THAT to SS to get it changed.
My sister got married 4 years ago, same place as me. She said she changed her middle name to our maiden name, but has no recollection of having to do the whole court petition thing. Both her DL and SS card show her middle name as our maiden name.
Has anyone else gone through this? Can you provide insight? Also, do you recommend going to the SS office or mailing the paperwork? I want to go in person, but I literally have 0 days off at work for the rest of the year, and I want to do it soon!!
Re: Changing your name...help?
If you changed your name at the time of your wedding, no court is involved. That is probably what your sister did. Then she could easily modify both middle and last.
If you wait until after the wedding and decide to do it later, courts must be involved. To me, I believe whoever you spoke to at SS is mistaken, they are probably assuming that you changed your name on your marriage license, so all you need to bring in is your marriage license and they can change it. That would be true, if that is the case. However, if you did not change it on your marriage license, SS is wrong and you would need to go to court to change your last name since you didn't do it at the time. This is also why they are saying they can't change your middle name, that is typically not changed on the license. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the input. I'm feeling very uneasy about the whole process now. I literally have 0 time to take off from work (a hurricane on our honeymoon delayed us 2 days, he got sick back in August and had to have surgery, I got sick a month before the wedding...), so I did the name change by mail. Too late to get it back now. They never asked us as the marriage license office what we wanted my name to be. It simply has my full name and his full name, with all the necessary signatures.
I really hope this works out and I don't have to run around for weeks trying to figure out exactly what I need to do!
Texas is one of the states in which you can change your middle name when you get married. I just took my marriage license to the SS office and filled out the forms.
Then you get to go to the DMV with your new SS card and your license as well.
Go to the office, it is much more dependable.
Hope it helps!
Congrats!
Sam