How to legally change your name

[Morgan]

another tip- if you are going to the social securituy office & have not filled the form out in advance, be sure to have your parent's SSN with you. you will need that for the form.

[Tracy]

Originally Posted by AnnR

Well, yes, I could have (long story!). Basically, when we got divorced we did it ourselves (no lawyers) and one of the forms asked if anyone would be changing their name. I said yes, and put my new/maiden name in the form.

Fast forward about 1 year later (I hadn't done anything to change my name back yet). I went to refinance on my house, and signed all the paperwork as my married name (Thompson) since that's what I was living as, but since I had been divorced since I bought the house I had to show my divorce decree.

The day after I refinanced, the woman called me back and said I had to resign everything as Herrick (new/maiden name). I explained that I had never bothered to actually change my name back. She then told me that I had already legally changed my name by just putting it in that form. I was like "what?!"

So after that (and veryifying with an attorney about what the heck my legal name was!) I began the slow process of changing everything back to my maiden name. Because I travel every week, I had to be careful of all my flights I had, what my ID said, etc. - and so it was easier just to not do anything. But when I started my new job in Oct I had them hire me with my maiden name, and got a credit card in that name, etc. Now, about half of my life is in my old married name, and the other half in my maiden name. Oh, and since Paul and I are moving back to MN I wanted to wait to get my drivers license updated, I never got my IL drivers license).

And that's about when Paul proposed. lol So I suppose I could wait to change everything to Paul's last name ... but some things would be going from one name, and some the other. And my legal name is my maiden name.

See - long, boring story. Funny, eh!? It's actually a running joke about how I have no idea what my name is anymore.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Anyway ... that's my story!

WOW - you could have replaced your name with mine and taken out the refinancing part... and that would have been my exact story - ha ha.