Legally Change Your Name

You would think that it would be easy to legally change your name. After all, with all of the people out there getting married, a legal name change must be an almost everyday occurrence. Well, yes and no is the answer. It is easy for you to legally change your name if you are getting married or divorced. They have streamlined the process, so the legal name change forms are included as part of the marriage or divorce process. They want to make it easy for couples, because they want more people to get married. More marriages means more babies and more relatively well off households. Also more social stability, some would believe. You get the idea.

But if you want to legally change your name for your own reasons, you had best make sure that you are really determined before you go about it. They are not going to make it easy for you to legally change your name. I do not know why. It seems like it should be a right of every American to go through a legal name change with a minimum of hassle. Just because you are not a woman getting married, that does not mean that you should have to jump through hoops just to legally change your name, but there it is. Lots of hoops. A whole circus, in fact.

You are required to fill out multiple forms to legally change your name. You might even have to go before a judge before the legal name change is complete, and at the very least, the judge has to approve of the new name. You will have to take out an ad in a public newspaper, saying that you are going to legally change your name, and notify all of the relevant authorities. The whole process can take weeks, or even months, and some of the steps do often involve having to pay a fee.

I guess that there is some logic to making it involved to legally change your name, as it prevents certain abuses of the system. You can not, for example, legally change your name to avoid getting caught by the authorities. On the contrary, you will find yourself quickly delivered into criminal custody once you start to legally change your name, if you are already wanted. But still, there has to be a way for them to make it easier to catch a few crooks without making it harder for you to legally change your name if you want to.