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You will have to go to your court house and get name change paperwork. And yes, it is a Petition. You will be petitioning the court for a legal name change. You may want to have your FI do this before you are married, then all you will have to do is change your name to his when you get married.
Noritake is right, you will actually have to go to court. Check the website of your local court to see if they have the petition form. You (or your future FI) may have to actually go before a judge.
@noritake- I hadn't thought of that.. him changing his name first. You're smart!
I changed my name legally (not marriage) and it was a PITA. In my state I had to go to court twice and publish 2 notices in the newspaper. It cost me over $600 with filing fees and ad fees. however, I thought it was totally worth it, and every state varies.
Ok... so does the process take a while? So we fill out the paperwork and we may have to actually go before the judge, is there like a waiting time or anything like that?
@littlespitfire- $600 are you serious? Holy crap... maybe we won't change it then. That makes me sad.
Well I finally found some information. I was googling earlier, but I got a little more specific and just googled names changes in Kansas. I found the paperwork and it states that the fee is $166. Now I just have to find out how much it costs to put the notice in the paper (which the state requires you to do three times.)
Legal bees out there: Do you think it'd be easier to change my name than my SO? I have one "non moving violation" ticket and one speeding ticket. No other legal problems of any kind.
My SO on the other hand had two DUI's in the state. He was on three years probation, one year supervised and two unsupervised. He comes off probation in october of this year.
For him changing his name: I am not a lawyer, but when you change your name through petition one of the things the judge looks for is intent to defraud---are you changing it to run from the law, to impersonate someone else, and the like. I think as long as your fiance demonstrates that he does not intend to defraud the probation system then you'd be fine. Really though it would probably be less headache if you waited until after October though.
For you changing your name instead of him: You will have to check whether in Kansas there is a provision for a man changing his name upon marraige. In some states, only the woman is allowed a name change at marriage and the man has to go through the regular petition process. If there is no provision for a groom name change, I don't see much point in you paying to legally change your name to the new name because as long as he did it before your marriage, you could then do it for free.
So I guess the two things you have to figure out is whether his probation will have any impact on his eligibility for a legal name change, and whether Kansas allows grooms to change their names upon marriage. Good luck!
@chelsea- Thanks so much for the thoughts. We definitely won't be changing either of our names before October, so hopefully changing his won't be an issue. Any idea on how I find out if Kansas allows grooms to change their name upon marriage?
I'd call your county (or city, whoever handles it there) and see what the rules are. In our state (which is definitely unusual in its laws!) you can actually change to a combination name provided the parts are part of the current names of groom and bride, for instance (but have to go through the whole shebang if you're changing to something that's not already part of the bride or groom's name). You can also have one partner change the name pre-marriage, and then the second person just gets counted as a marriage name change (much cheaper), vs. both partners changing their names afterwards, which is much more expensive/complicated. Whoever handles this for your jurisdiction can probably advise you on the best way to do it if you explain what the end goal is. Good luck!
@oakster- That totally gives me hope! We had decided that one of us would change the name before the wedding... but I'm going to call the court tomorrow and ask some questions. Maybe in our state we're allowed to combine names which would be awesome!!
I had a legal name change about a year ago, taking on my step-father's name, which will now become my maiden name. It took about 20 minutes to run to city hall, fill out the paper work, and submit it. I got the approved papers about a week later, had my driver's license changed a few days after that. It was all very simple, and I think it cost around $40.
I don't know all the specifics but when my Mom wanted our last name changed legally to my step dad's (we had already gone by it our whole lives w/o knowing any different) we had to go to court. They just asked why we wanted to do it, if we were running from charges...basic stuff. IT took about 5 minuets. Nothing major.
In MN each person gets a free legal name change with the Marriage license.
Phew :)
I'm a worrier, and a pessimist.... so sometimes I overthink things in my head and get all worked up before I know if I should or not.
It's actually not too bad. I had my name legally changed a while back, and all I had to do was go to the local courthouse, fill out the paperwork, sign an oath stating that I wasn't doing it for fraudulent purposes. The staff sent it to a judge and then mailed it back to me within the week. All I had to do from there was go about getting all of my credit cards, driver's lisence, SS card, etc changed.
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I'm wondering if any of you bees out there can help me with this situation.
(Please disregard the fact that I'm still "waiting." I am a planner and like to know all the information before making a decision.)
My SO and I have discussed changing our name to a combination of his last name and mind. No hyphenating. It'd be like half of mine and half of his.
So I started googling today. LegalZoom.com said that changing our last name to a name not already "owned" by either of us would require a name change petition, not just taking the marriage certificate to change my name. So my question is.... how exactly do you go about filing a name change petition. What kind of things are required?
I looked it up on my state government website, and the county court website but couldn't find anything. The US Government website says that all state rules are different and to start with the county court. At this rate I'm going to have to call them and ask.
Have any of you gone this route or known someone who has? Is it a long process? What's involved? I really hope someone can help me here :)