If a married female adult is adopted, do they go back and change her maiden name?
If so, how does that work? She would presumably have a marriage license and possibly a degree under her maiden name - would all that need to be changed?
Nobody’s name is ever automatically changed without their permission, regardless of marriage, adoption, etc. Her name is what she wants it to be.
Well along the same lines can someone change their maiden name, one they switch over to a ‘married’ name?
You generally get a free last name change when you get married (at least women usually do). You can switch it to your husband’s name if you want or you can change it to Mrs. High Priestess III if you want in most states.
Any adult can change their name through a fairly simple court process at any time. They are almost always granted no matter what it is unless it is for intent to defraud (Mr. “None of the Above”).
Names aren’t a fixed thing if you don’t want them to be.
Shagnasty Yes I knew that, actually either or both genders can change their name when they get married. What I was trying to ask, if:
Jane was the child of the Doe’s, so her name was Jane Doe.
Jane marries John Smith, & changes her name to Jane Smith.
OK, all well and good.
Jane’s goes by Jane Smith, but still has a maiden name of Jane Doe.
Now after having repressed memories of having to eat her spinach as a child revealed, she wants to disown her parents, and another couple decide to adult adopt her, their name is Mr and Mrs Johnston. Could she change her maiden name to Jane Johnson even though she does not use her maiden name, except only as a maiden name?
I am not sure how that would work. For females especially, your name is really whatever you say it is in given circumstances. My wife uses her maiden name in business, has some things listed under a hyphenated last name, and uses my last name for personal things.
A woman’s maiden name will be stored all over the place in various databases for banks, businesses, and the government. There isn’t really a true master registry. For most of those, I guess you could just start providng whatever maiden name you want and I suppose you can ask them to correct it when you run across an old entry. It isn’t that unusual for females to list a maiden name other than their real one. I have known several women raised by their grandparents or other family members with a different last name to say that is their middle name even if they were never legally adopted.
The most official places the maiden name would be listed are the birth certificate and the record at the Social Security Administration. I don’t know if you can amend your birth certificate for that purpose but I would guess not because that was your name at birth. I know that you can amend just about anything with the Social Security Administration but it takes time. My year of birth is currently listed as one year later than my real one and I once requested the material to amend my record and quickly decided to put that off for a few years when I have substantial free time.
In summary, you could start saying your maiden name was whatever you want and that would go into whatever new databases you sign up for. It might cause some problems because there are going to be many mismatches with existing data. There is no one place where you can change your name and have that information filter down everywhere. The Social Security administartion is where the government gets most of its information for that type of thing.
Thanks for the information, very helpful.
No, no. Her maiden name WAS “Doe.” “My maiden name was” means “The name I had on the day I got married and changed it was…” Basically, it’s a member of a “names formerly used” list.
You can’t retroactively change what names you’ve used, even if someone else changes their name. Your name is legally the specific letters in the specific order, not “the same as your mom/dad/husband/wife/grandmother’s name,” so changing someone else’s name doesn’t change yours.
I didn’t even know adults could get adopted. What’s the point of it, from a legal standpoint?
Inheritence, next-of-kin for medical reasons, formalize the relationship.
Judges can and sometimes do refuse name changes for the most frivolous reason (or none at all). In one case of some people my wife knew, they had a long difficult to pronounce name. So did the judge and he decided that wasn’t a reason. Dismissed.
On the other hand, the PA dept of vital stats in effect gave me a name change with no judge at all, when I asked for a birth certificate giving my birth name. Since that differred from the name I now use, they wrote back to say that if I sent them proof that I had used the new name for at least ten years, they would issue the certificate in the new name. I could and did. I had never once used the birth name, so it was easy. That was in 1999. Would they do it today? I don’t know. They didn’t in 1964 when I got my first passport. But the passport office did, provided I could get affidavits from two people who knew me under both names; fortunately my parents were both alive. There is not a single person around today who ever knew me under my birth name.
On the other hand, I never became a Canadian citizen because they told me that if I did, I would have to revert to my birth name. Now that I have that birth certificate, there is no way they can find out.
In New York, an adult adoptee is issued a new birth certificate with the new name on it.
Yes, same for all adoptees in NY (at least in 1988 that was how it worked). Some adult adoptions formalize the process of adopting someone who may have been raised with a family, sometimes as a foster child or stepchild, or just an arbitrary relationship.
In Ontario, an adoption results in a formal name change (meaning a new birth certificate with the adopted name or whatever name the person wants). The age of the person who is adopted is not relevant. Marriage does not result in a formal name change, although many women chose to use their husband’s name as an alias, including on a lot of their ID. At pretty much any time, a person can have a formal name change.
I’m working to figure out the best practice for the wife when her adult husband is re-adopted by his birth father (decades after stepfather adoption). Adult Husband will change his name back to original birth name. Wife wants to make the change too. In my state, spouses regularly take Husband’s name (as per common tradition). I am searching for a court form that handles it. There is definitely an easy $10 process for wife to resume use of maiden name. But this is a new twist.
I know of a case where a couple were engaged, the intent was that she would take her husband’s name when they got married, but the guy wanted to change his last name to disown his father. Afaik he did not get adopted by anyone - he just went down to the courthouse and filed for a name change and that was that. Since he did this before he got married (I think the timing was intentional) the wife did not need to worry about “re-taking” her husband’s name - she just took the name he had at the time of the wedding, which was the new one.
This principle is enshrined in “Common Law” and is, in theory, true in most or all jurisdictions of the US. Take a look at the case of J. D. McUlta. It’s probably a lot harder to do nowadays due to skeptical clerks at the DMV and surly officials at the passport office, but those are administrative hurdles, not necessarily legal barriers per se.
There’s an interesting question here. Is there a standard “legal definition of maiden name”, or is one’s maiden name defined through social practice and really only serves as a convenient password? For example, has anyone filled out a form asking them to declare their maiden name, their spouse’s, or their mother’s, and been told that their answer is incorrect?
E.g.
Clerk : “In order to process your application you need to disclose your mother’s maiden name.”
Applicant : “Smith. She was Ann Jane Smith.”
Clerk : “Wrong! She only went by Ann Jane Smith starting in high school. Her true maiden name is Schmidt - in full Ann Brunhilda Ursula Schmidt. Go stand in the corner.”
It’s apparently common in Japan, in order to pass a business down to a “relative”, if none of the biological children are deemed “worthy”.
I just ran thru several listings of various state rules on adult adoption. (I don’t want to link to the site due to annoying popup ads.)
Some states barely cover it, others go into detail. California’s is especially well spelled out.
Several differences about minimum age, who has to give consent (spouses of adopters sometimes, spouses of adoptees maybe), status of birth parents, etc.
I noticed that one state banned adopting ones spouse explicitly. Which raises the question of: Is adopting your spouse legal in those states that allow anyone to adopt another adult? (Cue up “I’m my own grandpa.”)
Taking the surname of the adopter seems to be rarely explicitly mentioned as allowed. Not sure how that effects birth certificates differently from child adoptions.
Most cases of adult adoption from a ways back I’ve heard of were the standard wealthy old guy with a “close relationship” to a younger guy who wanted to ensure passing the wealth down to his long term companion. Note that such a couple who have done this would be unable to marry in a same -sex-marriage-legal state as they are considered parent and child.
For males, too. No courtroom necessary. Your legal name is whatever you’ve been consistently using as your name. Best bet is to change utilities and other simple things first, then with those in hand get your driver’s license and voter registration changed, then finish off with social security admin and passport.