Name change in the age of covid.

From what I understand, yes. I am having the same struggle except mine had to go from Kansas courts to the North Carolina Social Security Office back to the Kansas Social Security Office. It’s a whole mess. Try calling the social security’s hotline first though.

Yes, you do need to mail your original birth and marriage certificates. If you mail it as certified mail then you can track it. Thousands of brides have done so. My daughter had a two week turn around with changing her name through SSN (California).

As PP said, you can send it certified mail. Also, by original they mean not a photocopy. You can also try to get another copy of your birth certificate from the appropriate county office so you have a spare.

Yes. I did this during covid. Send it certified with a certified return label included. It will be fine.

I only sent my original driver’s license, certified copy of our marriage license & the application. I sent it certified mail & has absolutely no problems getting everything back.

I sent mine through mail, and it was returned safely and fairly quickly.

Yes, it’s just how it is right now. I did it and it was totally fine. I used FedEx so I could track it and just purchased the quickest shipping I could. Everything came back to me in a week no issue and I got my new social security card a few days later. I know it seems really risky but if you want to get the process going you kind of have to do it.

Call your local office to see exactly what you ACTUALLY have to send. For me (on the central coast of CA), I only had to send in the application and a certified copy of my marriage certificate - no birth certificate or driver's license needed. I sent everything just through USPS without any sort of tracking. My marriage license was returned about a week after I sent it and I got my new SS card about a week after that. If you do need to send a birth certificate, they need a certified copy - not specifically the original document. Same goes for if they need a marriage certificate. (To be fair, their phrasing choice could definitely be better!) If you're worried about stuff getting there and back safely, you can always send it by certified mail.

Definitely call your local office to see what they require (and get their address, it might be different from what Google tells you) because it definitely seems like they all want different things. I mailed in my birth certificate, marriage certificate, passport, the name change application, and a note asking them to send it all back (my local office didn't want a return envelope/postage). I got a letter saying they'd received my application about a week later. My documents were returned to me about a week after that and my new social security card arrived about a week after that.

It was a little scary, but it didn't take too long and it is always possible to get replacement documents. (You can order a replacement driver's license online and use that to replace your other documents if you really need to, so your identity wouldn't totally disappear.)


For what it's worth, a lot of people have asked similar/related questions about this and I've never seen anyone actually say their documents were lost.

View Quoted Comment Thank you.

View Quoted Comment Oh. Thats good to know!! Thank you so much.

Changing Your Name After Marriage - UpdateMyName.com