How much time do you have to change your name after getting married? And how might you avoid getting consumed by the effects of waiting too long to meet your deadlines?
Today you will learn to schedule and order your name change chronology, from your social security card and passport, to your driver's license or REAL ID.
Lets Begin Here…..
Suppose you have completed a name change event:
Marriage
Divorce or annulment
Court-petitioned name change
And you have a name change document proving said event:
Marriage certificate
Divorce decree
Court order
How much time do you have to change your name until you are:
Unable to change your name, period.
Forced into filing a new court-petitioned name change.
The good news is neither ugly outcome is on the table. But you still have to navigate other name change deadlines and consequences.
Deadlines, schedules, and running against the clock
There is no hard, destructive deadline to change your name after marriage, divorce, or court order. Meaning, you will never face an outright name change shut out.
Yet demarcations and time limits do exist that will affect the duration, expense, and effort involved in changing your name. You are running against the clock.
The longer you wait to change your name may cost you more in time, money, and energy spent because of shifting requirements. You are up against multiple timelines and deadlines.
When does your name change begin?
Do you know when the name change process starts?
Upon marriage, divorce, or court petition.
Updating your social security card.
Updating your driver's license.
None of the above.
The answer is split:
None of the above for passports.
Updating your social security card for everything else.
Social security ID deadline
The Social Security Administration has a two year rule for social security card name changes. Their identity verification standards are stricter after two years.
Meaning, your name change document may serve as ID—in place of photo ID—if your name change event took place within two years. This simplifies name change by mail.
For instance, if you got married 23 months ago, you have one month left to change the name on your social security card by mail using just your marriage certificate; no need to include your driver's license, passport, or other photo ID.
There is no penalty beyond the added inconvenience.
Driver's license notification deadline
Most U.S. states have laws that dictate when you must notify the driver's license authority—DMV, DOT, DPS, BMV, etc—that you have changed your name or address.
What do your state's laws require?
The most common notification intervals are 10, 30, and 60 days, as shown in the following table. We will explain later why this may represent a Herculean or impossible task.
State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware | Deadline 30 days 30 days 10 days 30 days 10 days 30 days 48 hours 30 days |
District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri | 60 days 30 days 60 days 30 days 90 days 10 days 30 days 30 days 10 days 10 days 10 days 30 days 30 days 30 days 10 days 30 days 30 days Unspecified |
Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas | 10 days 60 days 30 days 30 days One week 10 days 10 days 60 days 10 days 10 days 10 days 30 days 15 days 10 days 10 days Unspecified 10 days 30 days |
Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming | 10 days 30 days 30 days 10 days 20 days 10 days 10 days |
Such deadlines are trivial if you were only changing your address. Many DMVs offer change of address online or by mail. But name change requires two extra components:
Changing your name in person.
Updating your social security record first.
Explaining what it means to notify
So your state driver's license office says you must notify them of your address or name change within a precise number of days: 10, 30, 60, or whatnot.
For example,
[You] shall notify the department of the change not later than the 30th day after the date on which the change takes effect and apply for a duplicate license
Example name change statute.
But what does "notify" mean? An email, phone call, or form submission? And what does "of the change" and "change takes effect" represent? The day you marry or divorce?
Here is the real-world translation…
You must apply for a new driver's license, REAL ID, or state-issued ID card—in person—within 30 days of changing the name on your social security record.
Clarified rewording of prior example name change statute.
Not 30 days from your marriage, divorce, or other name change event, but counting from when the Social Security Administration updates your record.
Driver's license and social security names must match
You may have noticed throughout this page references to your social security record, not your social security card. This is the metric used by your driver's license office.
They will use your marriage certificate, divorce decree, court order, or other name change document to confirm your name change event occurred. But that alone is not enough.
First, they will check that your name change took place on the federal level by performing an electronic query against the Social Security Administration database.
Your driver's license name change depends on your social security name change finishing first. Your name change will get rejected if they discover an identity mismatch.
Tip: Space out your social security and driver's license name change by 24 to 48 hours. This gives time for social security's database to refresh before getting queried.
Penalties for not reporting
You may incur a penalty for failure to report your address or name change to the DMV within the allotted time frame.
A failure to notify penalty is most often applied when a police officer pulls you over for an unrelated traffic violation, and not upon renewing your driver's license.
Your social security filing will not get a tracking number akin to a mail parcel. Beyond receiving your new card by mail, you will not know when your record has updated.
Pandemic-related social security office closures have forced applications to mail and extended processing times. Mapping out your name change calendar may involve guesswork.
Your DMV's name change deadlines may be difficult or impossible to honor, given their expectation that your social security name change gets finished first.
But written law and real life often diverge. You may take solace knowing that while penalties and fines are real, their deliveries are rare. (Minus the unlucky).
Complying with the law
Abiding by these narrow time constraints is tough even if you were intent to follow the spirit and letter of the law by expediting your name change.
Passport notification deadline
The U.S. State Department does not exact penalties for failure to change the name or address associated with your passport. You could even renew your old name.
Your passport age affects the renewal fees, forms, and steps. Waiting too long may up the fees while ruling out the convenience of mailing your paperwork.
If your passport is less than one-year-old, you can renew it by mail for free via Form DS-5504. This is when good timing and expeditiousness can become a money saver.
Between one and 15 years, $100+ fees kick in via Form DS-82. But they still allow renewal by mail. Beyond 15 years, you have got bigger fees and in person filing via Form DS-11.
Deadline to final destination
There is no cut-off-point deadline for changing your name after marriage, divorce, or court order. But target dates in between may make your life harder when they are past due.
Two key takeaways:
Do not procrastinate.
Do not start what you cannot finish.
