Last name change help!

Call your local office and ask them what they need from you. I thought I needed a lot more documents from what I found online but I called and they told me to just send in the application from their site with a certified copy of my marriage certificate and that was it. It was super easy and they mailed back my marriage certificate right away but it took like 6 weeks to get the actual ss card in the mail.

My SIL got me a package from HitchSwitch and looking at the paperwork they sent, as long as your marriage license has your birthdate on it, you just need to send your original marriage license and the completed form. But I don't love the idea of mailing off the only copy of my marriage license so I'm trying to wait for offices to reopen....I've been checking daily to see if anything has been announced. They have to reopen soon right??

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This is actually super reassuring to hear that you got your marriage license back with no problem! I don't fully trust USPS with anything of importance but maybe I will just mail in my paperwork to social security instead of waiting indefinitely for offices to reopen.

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I purchased a three extra certified copies of my marriage certificate and the original one never left my house. Highly recommend getting the copies for name changing purposes. Certified copies should be acceptable anywhere just make sure they are certified and not a regular copy (you can just get that from the clerks office). SSA sent back my certificate within a week and i got my card with 6 weeks, DMV was open and they checked over my stuff and gave it back same day, and passport took the longest like 12 weeks.

View Quoted Comment Thanks, Katie, this is helpful! I did call earlier today, but the agent wasn’t helpful at all. She said for identification if I’m not traveling anytime soon I can send a passport, definitely not doing that! I’ll call back tomorrow and hopefully get someone different that can help haha.

View Quoted Comment Awesome! I guess if anything you can always order an additional copy of the original marriage license? I may have to try this instead of waiting for the offices to reopen, who knows when that will be. Thank you!

I called my social security office. I have to send them my original copy of our marriage license. However the person told us to make a copy of our marriage license and get it notarized so that we would have a copy for ourselves. He also ask us if we had one page of marriage license or two pages of our marriage license. The reason they asked is bc if marriage license on sent you the original of the marriage certificate you would have to fill out the application and send that in with your marriage license. If you have the marriage license along with the information with your personal information such as birth date, city, parents name etc. and send those two in you do not have to fill out the application bc they will already have the information. I went to the dmv and had my new name changed. Therefore I can send them the copy of our marriage license, the second page that have our personal information and a copy of my driver's license. I hope that this was helpful.

You definitely want to mail your stuff to the local office, but calling mine wasn't especially helpful. I mailed in the application with our marriage certificate, my birth certificate, my passport, and a note asking them to send all of that back to me. I took pictures of everything before I sent it, but then I just put it in the mail box and hoped for the best. It worked out well because I got my documents back quickly, but I know some people have mailed their applications and documents with package tracking (it has to be via USPS) and included a return envelope that also included package tracking, so you could do that if you're really nervous about it.

Changing your name is kind of a hassle, so if my license was about to expire, I would definitely want to change my name with SSA before that happens. I feel like having your current name on your license will reduce the number of times you have to produce your marriage certificate to prove your identity, so it's probably worth the risk to do this by mail.

I hear ya, and my license has to be renewed this November so I'm planning on changing my name on my license when I renew it. I just sent out the application along with my marriage certificate (they said that's all they needed in my case) in the mail yesterday. Definitely make sure to mail it to your local office, though.

View Quoted Comment Hi Alisha,


Thanks so much for sharing your experience! This is certainly helpful!

View Quoted Comment Thank you, Melody! From the responses on this thread it sounds like the marriage certificate alone should work. I’ll have to confirm with my local office but hopefully that’s all they need. Good luck to you!

View Quoted Comment You are welcome.

MissNowMrs.com

MissNowMrs.com

Very quick and easy!