Adventures in bureaucracy: Changing your name and pushing the red button

The BBQ Pit
1

Two rants in one!

Rant 1: So I got married last week, and today my wife and I headed off to change her last name. When we picked up the marriage license, we were told that she would need to go to the Social Security office and get a Social Security card before she could get a new driver’s license.

So we go to the SS office, where she is informed that she needs a form of identification with her new name, such as a driver’s license, to get a new SS card. Rejected and dejected, we head to the license bureau, where we assume we’ll enter a hellish Catch-22. Suprisingly enough, though, the license bureau lets her change her name on her license, no problem, and even lets her change her address without any proof! The catch? They won’t let her change her name the way she wants to.

When our son was born, we named him Mylastname-Herlastname, because it sounds better that way, and that’s what she wanted to change her last name to. But no, in Missouri, the husband’s name has to be the last one in hyphenated last names. So now her last name is Herlastname-Mylastname, and with the actual names it doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as nicely as the other way around.

We headed back to the Social Security office and succeeded in getting her name changed to one she doesn’t like and didn’t want in the first place. Yippee.

Rant 2: The government seems completely inept at integrating IT systems into their offices. (Maybe an IT contractor can back me up here; I’m just posting my personal observations.) The Social Security office mentioned above is a very small one, with about 10 chairs and two little cubicles, located on the top of a small bank building. They needed some sort of system for calling people up, but did they get one of those little number-paper dispensers like the post office has? Of course not, they got something much more expensive, complicated and wasteful.

When we walked into the office, the security guard at the other end of the room told us to push the little red button on the keypad mounted to the wall. When you do that, a little receipt printer prints out a ticket with a number on it. It works just the same way as the little number-paper dispenser, except of course it’s more expensive, uses more paper and requires someone to stand there and tell people how to use it. I don’t know why the government didn’t buy it sooner.

On our second trip to the SS office, I was sitting there while my wife filled out paperwork when two Asian men walked in. The guard told them, “Young man, look to your left and push the red – no, the left. Look to your left and push the red button.”

They looked around, confused, so I stood up to point out the button to them and tell them what to do. The guard yelled at me - “Young man, please sit down!” “I was just trying to point out the button to them,” I said, but he took no notice. Finally, the two Asian men found the button. This went on as more and more people filed in, and every time, the guard had to tell them to look to their left and push the little red button.

I see this sort of incompetent use of technology everywhere in government offices. At the post office, they have little pin pads for swiping your credit card, but they had to have signs made telling you not to swipe your credit card through. Glad to know my tax money got spent on unnecessary technology there. And why is it the post office has such strict credit card policies, anyway? Are a lot of people committing credit card fraud by mailing packages with other peoples’ cards?

At least they take credit cards. The county license bureau only just started taking debit cards, for which they charge a 2 percent fee. The last time I saw a fee for using your debit card in a non-government store was about five years ago.

Admittedly, none of this was horribly inconveniencing, but it only proved to me more how no one in the government who deals with customers has ever apparently been a customer themselves.

2

Really? Is there anything stopping me average joe from changing my last name to “Yourlastname-Herlastname”

3

Your wife can get her name changed to what she wants. It’ll just require going through the court system to have a name change done that way.

4

Is there a reason for that? (I guess I should ask, is there a sound, logical reason for that?)

5

I feel your pain. I discovered that in Louisiana, I have to sign legal documents with my maiden name. Oh, I can tack my married name on if I want, but that’s not my legal name. So I had to sign papers to purchase a house with a name that matches nothing in my possession (except my birth certificate) – not my driver’s license, not my passport, nothing. And no way to change it, without going back and changing my birth certificate since that’s the name they wanted me to use. It’s just obnoxious to be told the name you’re using isn’t good enough for the government.

6

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but in Oklahoma, we have common-law names; when I got married, my husband had no trouble changing HIS name to MY name.

Basically, you’re entitled to change your name at marriage to whatever you jolly well choose. You could both change your names to John and Suzy Pinkdonut if you liked.

At the divorce, we figured that there might be some trouble in him trying to take his name back, so we actually wrote into the divorce the statement that he would return to his birth name. No trouble changing it back, either.

We solved the Social Security issue by getting copies of our college transcripts, which are “official state documents” with both the former and current names on them.

So, I gotta wonder, if the kid is Smith-Jones, and one of you is Smith and one of you is Jones, why change anything legally? Sounds perfect to me! (I may be a little off the beaten path, though, as demonstrated above.)

7

It shouldn’t even require going through the court system. You have a right to use whatever name you want. I’m surprised (well, not that surprised) that the DMV gave the OP’s wife such a hard time about it.

Generally you only need to go through the court system if you absolutely need a public record of the change.

8

At a wedding-info website I’ve been visiting recently, I’ve heard that a lot of people have trouble with the DMV in the US over their name changes. They seem to come up with a lot of inconsistently applied “rules” that no-one else has ever heard of. People have been getting around them by getting their name sorted out at some other department first, then marching in with a document with the new name and demanding that the DMV match it.

9

In NY, you can change your name at marriage to either spouse’s last name, maiden last name, or any previous last name by marriage, or any hyphenated combination of the above. It must, however, be a last name previously or currently used by one or the other of the marrying pair. However, the INS doesn’t want to believe that a man can take a woman’s last name, and has to be beaten over the head to accept this. Just an FYI.
Of course, the real temptation is to do something totally ridiculous - maybe have the wife take the husband’s name while he takes her last name from a previous marriage.

mischievous

10

Anecdotal - No actual cite or law to be produced herein.

When we changed my wife’s name (3 years after we got married), the WA DMV told us we had to have the SS card changed first, as did the bank when we tried to get her name changed on the account. We contacted SS, who told us to mail in the appropriate forms (accessible via the website) as well as the original marriage certificate which was returned.

Couple of weeks later, new SS card came in the mail. Off to DMV, off to the bank, everything went tickety boo. If I recall correctly, for the SS to change her card without a whole bunch of rigamarole, they either needed something with her new name or a document with her old name as well as the new one.

Ah. Here we are:

"You must show us a recently issued document as proof of your legal name change. Documents Social Security may accept to prove a legal name change include:

* Marriage document;
* Divorce decree specifically stating you may change your name; or
* Court order for a name change."

From here

11

This is one of many reasons why I always advise people not to muck around with their names when they get married. The world will not come to an end if all parties keep the names they were born with.

I changed my name to my husband’s last name when we married (in Wisconsin). No biggie. Sign the marriage license, take it in to the DMV and get a new driver’s license, go to Social Security and change that, change credit cards etc etc etc.

The fun started when I decided it didn’t sound like my name, and I wanted to change it back. By then we were living in Kansas, and their DMV insisted I could not change my name on a driver’s license unless I went to court and got my name legally changed and showed them the papers. I looked into it; no lawyer necessary for that, just file the papers, see the judge and pay the court costs.

Except that the low-level clerks at the courthouse, with whom I would have to file the paperwork, didn’t believe it. Told me I’d be “practicing law without a license” if I did that. No amount of my pointing out that anyone is entitled to represent him/herself in court at any time could get through the fog of Kansas ignorance.

And I sure as hell wasn’t paying a lawyer to do something I should be able to do myself.

Never could get past the idiots in the Sedgwick County Courthouse. Given the quality of legal service in Wichita (where a guy who shot six people from the top of the Holiday Inn got a fair trial, but when the postal inspectors sent off a bogus subscription to Screw magazine and promptly had Al Goldstein arrested for obscenity, they had to get a change of venue) I gave up on it after a while.

Got to California, discovered that California allowed “change by usage.” So I went to the DMV with my Kansas license and my birth certificate, told 'em I was changing my name back, they changed it for me, no problem. Went to Social Security with my new license, told 'em I wanted to change my name back, they said I had to go to court and show them the papers, I said nope, California allows change by usage, here’s my driver’s license and my birth certificate, I want my name back. They changed it. Some of the credit card companies changed my name without question, some had to be told the same thing about California law. A couple never did manage to get my name right.

But you know what? I never should have changed the doggone name in the first place. No law requires it; no reason any woman should have to give up her name just because she got married. It’s a dumb tradition whose time has long since passed.

12

Didn’t the OP say it was the Social Security office that gave them a ahard time and that it was smooth sailing at the DMV?

13

I don’t think it is that dumb of a tradition. I think it is a good way to help show that what was once two people from two different families is now one, single family. It is a residual bit of patriarchism that the man’s name is typically the default one chosen, but the concept of having a married couple both having the last name is actually a pretty good one in my opinion.

14

In Quebec we have a very sensible system: as far as the government is concerned, you get a name at birth, and if you want to change it for any reason, you have to go through the same procedure as anyone else.

15

I think you’re right. I’m about to get married again, and I’ll be taking on his name at that time. I’d stick with the name I was born with, but when I married the first time, I took that name, so I guess I’ve set a precedent.

Well, whatever. At least the “Julia” and the “Dung Beetle” have been constant.

16

I knew a couple who, when they got married, combined their two previous last names into a new one – not hyphenated, an actual new name. It was sweet, actually, but oy, the aggravation. It’s really not worth going to all that trouble, I wouldn’t think, unless you’re sentimental fools like they are.

17

Fabulous. If I did that with my new husband we’d either be the Strongmans or the Armpitts! :slight_smile:

18

If it makes you feel any better, its money from the stamps that you have bought – not the taxes you pay – that financed the purchase of those devices.

Feel better? :slight_smile:

19

Just a thought: Mr. Jones marries Ms. Smith = Mr.& Mrs. Jones-Smith
Mr. Black marries Ms. White = Mr.& Mrs.Black-White

each couple has children- the Jones-Smith girl loves the Black-White boy.

New couple - Mr. & Mrs. JonesSmith-BlackWhite - when does the madness end- :wink: ?

crazy!

20

Speaking as an IT Security geek who mostly creates user ID’s for people from forms that get submitted online, there are several reasons for the system to work this way:

  1. If it is entirely paper-driven, it falls into the dreaded pit of We’ve Always Done It This Way, along with “we’ve got a storage room full of these forms that they had printed up in the Carter administration, and we’re going to keep using them no matter what.” Go rent Brazil.

  2. If it is entirely automated, it falls into the dreaded pit of “That’s the way it was coded, and it would cost $4.7 million to change it now.”

  3. If there is room for interpretation, the person you were talking to was either (a) a seasoned veteran who’s been doing it this way for 27 years and isn’t about to change now, or (b) a new hire who was told to do it a particular way and is terrified of making a mistake and therefore slavishly devoted to following the holy writ (probably as handed down by that aforementioned 27 year veteran…).