Married Life
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Newly Married (again). Have a Question.
We're both 56. This is my second marriage and I have kids and grandkids. This is his first marriage. My question is this. What are the pros and cons to changing my name? Can I keep my first married name? I always hated my maiden name and I adored my first married name. I built my personal and professional life with that name and my kids and grandkids all have that name. My new husband is fine with my keeping that name but I'm wondering if it's legal to keep the first married name? I never changed it back to my maiden name after the divorce. What do you all think?
Mia
Re: Newly Married (again). Have a Question.
Example: If your maiden name was Smith, and you didn't like it, you could change it to whatever you want even if you didn't get married.
Since you legally changed your name after your first marriage, that is now your legal name. If you don't want to change it, you do not have to.
As pp have said, legally you have have/keep whatever name you want.
Even though your new DH said he is fine with you doing whatever you want regarding your name, I think it's wrong to keep your first married name. I'm a total feminist and if you wanted to keep your maiden name, I would be 1000% behind you. But... you want to keep your first husband's name. That wouldn't sit well with me if I were your DH. Out of curiousity, are you divorced from 1st husband or widowed?
This is a second marriage for us both too. We talked about whether or not I would or would even want to change my last name. What we decided to do is that I will take his last name. However, at work, I will keep my maiden name on everything since that is the name I used to build my career. Whatever name you choose to keep is yours. Your first married name is yours and you have built yourself up on it. If you want to keep it, that is perfectly legal. The bride taking her husbands name is more of a tradition than a 'have to'.
Have you asked him if he would be willing to consider hyphenating his last name or taking yours? It is my understanding that even though this is not a widespread practice, some men do make the name change in light of their wives careers or for other personal reasons. Hope this helps.