Changing Your Name After Your Divorce

 Posted on July 09, 2018 in Divorce

When a marriage ends, both partners can feel a sense that their identities have changed. This can be especially true for individuals, usually women, who chose to change their surnames when they married. Changing your name after your divorce is a personal choice. There are as many valid reasons to change your name as there are reasons to keep it, just like there were when you first married. Think about the following reasons why others choose to keep or change their names after divorce to determine the right course of action for yourself.

Reasons Why Divorced Women Keep Their Married Names

For many people, changing their last name to their spouse’s when they marry is not “taking” the spouse’s name, but creating a new family with the new surname. An individual with this mindset might choose to keep his or her married name after divorce because to him or her, it is as much his or her name as it is his or her former spouse’s name.

Other divorced individuals keep their married names for more practical reasons. These include:

• Having the same name as their children;
• Keeping the name under which they established themselves professionally; and
• Avoiding the legal complexities of changing their name on all their documents, like their passport and driver’s license.

Reasons Why Divorced Women Change Their Names

Among other divorced individuals, keeping one’s married name is not an option. An individual might feel like getting divorced is the beginning of the next chapter in his or her life, and changing his or her name is a way to signify this next chapter. Often, divorcing individuals feel that changing their names from the names they shared with their former spouses is a way to finalize the end of the relationship, a way to completely remove any references to the old spouse from their life.

When some individuals change their names after divorce, they change them to their former, or “maiden,” names. Others choose entirely new names for themselves, which could be other family names or entirely new names that they feel empowered to use. For an individual who hyphenated his or her name with his or her former spouse’s, dropping half of the hyphenated name is a way to change his or her name without adopting an entirely new surname and experiencing a drastic change.

Work with an Experienced St. Charles Divorce Lawyer

If you are planning on filing for divorce or if you have already done so and you now need legal representation to complete the process, call Shaw Sanders, P.C. at 630-584-5550 today to set up your initial legal consultation in our office. We can answer any questions you have about the divorce process and life afterward, including issues like how to change your name and how to alter your estate plans. Do not wait to start working with an experienced Kane County divorce lawyer.

Source:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmajohnson/2015/10/20/should-you-change-your-name-after-divorce/#5096a2a02df6