How To Info Center - How To Legally Change Your Name

Legally changing your name is assumed to be facile. There are so many people getting married, so a legal name change should be quite frequent. Even though that's partly true, changing your name might not always be such an easy thing to do. What is easy is to change your name in case of marriage or divorce.

The process has been speeded up and you get legal name change forms when getting married or divorce. The reason for that is that they want to make it easy for those willing to married. More children come with more marriages and this is a good thing.

However, if you decide to legally change your name for any other reasons of your own, then this process will be neither easy, nor fast. I don't know the reason for that but you should be very determined and stubborn. I believe every American should have the right to legally change his name in no time.

I really don't understand why it has to be so hard if you are not a woman getting married. But you have to go through the hoops before you can have a different name.

If you want to legally change your name and you are not in the process of getting married or divorced, then you need to fill out multiple forms. Sometimes you even should see a judge before the legal name change is done, what's more, the judge has to approve your new name.

Another thing you should do is to put an ad in a newspaper declaring you are going to change your name and notify all the proper authorities.

This process often takes weeks or even months and frequently you have to pay some fees. Of course, I am ready to accept that, because informing the authorities is necessary, as it prevents abuses of the system. For instance, if you are a criminal and you might want to legally change your name, so that the authorities won't find you.

However, once you start this time-consuming process of legal name change in case you are wanted you will soon be taken into custody. Despite that, there should be an easy way for ordinary citizens to legally change their names.

After all, fighting with criminals is good but it should not affect innocent people and make their life harder just because they want to have a different name.