I divorced four years ago when my kids were 10 and 14. I went back to my maiden name, and frankly it didn’t even cross my mind what the kids would think or how they would feel about it. I thought a lot about other ramifications, for them and all of us as a family, but not the name change. It’s my name, and going back to it did not affect my kids, or my relationship with them at all.
Kept my married name after divorce, now engaged to another man with that same surname. No relation!
My aunt retained the last name of her ex-husband, which I thought was rather odd, since she doesn’t even have any kids.
From the flip side, I kind of wish she WOULD change back to her maiden name. The divorce was 100% her idea (long story) and it creeps me out a bit that she’s still using my last name.
When I ditched ex-MrRobyn #2, I took my birth name back for legal reasons. It turned out to be a really good idea because he’s apparently got serious legal problems that I don’t need to get involved in.
Technical point: married women in Canada outside of Quebec who start using their spouse’s name rarely change their name, and instead simply use the spouse’s name as an alias. Quebec is the exception to this, in that married spouses keep their own names and do not use aliases, and the government only permits a spouse to change names in exceptional circumstances.
It isn’t a big deal for most separating couples. Some women keep using the alias, and some stop using the alias. There are lots of difficult challenges in separation, but names usually aren’t a bit problem.
The amusing thing is that most divorcing women have no idea that they had been and may still be using an alias.
This, but 11 years ago.
I hated his last name even before I started to hate him. It was hard to pronounce and hard to spell.
I never once consulted my son (he was 8 at the time) and he never asked. I think he thought it was just something you do.
Unrelated to any of that HE wants to change his last name for the reasons I mention. He’s sick of pronouncing/spelling/explaining it. He’s got no connection to the ‘family name’ - we’re not that sort of family - and the only reason he’s not done it is that he’s just now turned 18 and would have to explain to his dad.
But that had nothing to do with me.
I’ve always been of the opinion that if you have kids, keep their last name, and if you don’t, go back to your maiden name. It is definitely just an opinion though, as I can see several reasons why you might want to do the opposite. (Caveat that I love my husband and do not want a divorce – this is hypothetical!) I dislike my last name (not that my maiden is all that pretty) and we don’t associate with a lot of his family because of their poor life choices, so my first response would be to dump that name, but I do have a daughter and it’s HER last name too, so I’d keep it because it belongs to her.
I also think some people do weird things sometimes, but who am I to judge. My aunt was married in her early 20s, had three grown children and several grandchildren when her husband left her for another woman. She kept his name. Then she remarried again about age 60, divorced fairly amicably after just a couple of years, and kept that name. It bothered my grandmother a lot, but I wondered what I would do too. Go back to my maiden name I hadn’t used in 40 years? Go back to my first ex’s name, who had done some pretty hard things to me, but was also the last name of my children? I don’t know. And I have a close friend that was married for 2 years in her mid 20s. She kept his name, and 10 years later adopted three kids who have this random guy’s last name! It bugs me to no end, especially since she is really close to her own family and she is a genealogist. Why on earth give these kids a random last name? But it’s not my call, so do want you want. I’ve read of people divorcing and taking their mother’s maiden name instead of their own…
When my parents divorced, my mother kept her married name so there was no conflict there.
My older child, I had with a girlfriend and we weren’t married. We decided at the time to have him take her last name and, if it worked out and we got married, we’d just change it. Instead, we wound up splitting and I took custody of our son. For years he didn’t seem to think much about it but, around age nine, I was married and my wife/his step-mother was pregnant and the realization that he was the only non-family-surname member started to bother him. So we got his last name legally changed. I think he was okay with it when it was just the two of us but not when he started being “outnumbered”.
Ultimately, everybody’s last name comes from a male ancestor that they didn’t know. Your husband’s last name or your father’s?
A lot of women used to be raised with the idea that their lifetime surname would only arrive with marriage. I’m not female, so I don’t know, but I would imagine that would give you a lot looser connection with your own last name than us guys have.
My mother kept my father’s name when she divorced after 20 years, and still kept it when she married again. (Prescient, though: that marriage didn’t last.) My father had his name changed to a stepfather’s as a young teenager. He could have changed it back at any time after age 21, but it was so unthinkable for a grown man to change his last name that he never did.
I divorced and returned to my maiden name. My daughter was 2.5 so she didn’t realize the change.
I seriously doubt your kids really know your last name.
You will be called by the old name a lot at schools. In their world, it’s as if you never changed it.
I initially felt the same. But now, I think it’s a good thing. It lets her know that if she marries, her name is her choice.
I kept my first husband’s name, partly because of my son, partly because of my career, and partly because it’s easier to pronounce and spell than my maiden name. No big deal either way though.
This happened with me (multiple times, she had four different last names due to divorce, remarriage, divorce, remarriage, widowhood, remarriage). I can only remember a single time it was even slightly awkward, in the 1970s: a classmate asked me what my last name was, then greeted her with “Hi, Mrs. <name>!” when she came to pick me up. Never bothered me otherwise, and there was never a question as to whether she was my mom no matter what her last name happened to be.
As it is, I rather wished she’d had my name changed (preferably to her maiden name), as I came to kind of resent continuing to bear my deadbeat dad’s last name, while my mom’s side of the family continued to be in my life and actually took me in on occasion.
Actually, when I was married 25+ years ago in Chicago with regards to official forms and such there was no such “default”. There was certainly an opportunity for a name change, but the bureaucrats I dealt with at the county clerk’s office, the department of motor vehicles for my license, and so forth were just “are you changing your name or not?”
Now, the REST of society is a different matter…
If a woman in the US gets married and wants to change her name it’s not automatic, she has to exert a modicum of effort and fill out some forms to get it done. If she doesn’t, her name remains unchanged. At least in Chicago. She specifies if she is changing her name, not if she’s keeping it.
The custom continues because of social momentum, not government requirement.
This is a bogus strawman I’ve been hearing for a quarter century.
Oddly enough, the spouse and I discussed this prior to marriage. We decided that any offspring would have his surname. I know people where the boys get dad’s surname and the girl’s get mom’s. And yes, there are hyphenated kids. So what?
When the kids grow up they can decide for themselves and the next generation going forward. It’s not like this generation will make the decision that all subsequent people will have to live with.
A lot of folks steeped in US/anglophone culture seem to think the woman taking the man’s name is the default everywhere. It’s not. Lots of cultures the woman keeps her name life-long and somehow society staggers onward.
It also is a colossal pain in the ass for women. So basically you’re asking half the human race to be inconvenienced in the now to avoid a hypothetical problem in the future that will likely never arise.
When women went directly from their parents’ home to marriage it wasn’t an issue because she was probably 16-20 and had had no professional life outside prior to getting married. For any woman with a professional life BEFORE marriage, though, it’s a problem Even worse for women in academia or science where there is a requirement to publish and all publication are organized by surname. EVERY woman I’ve known who has that sort of career has kept their maiden name for professional reasons.
With more and more identity documents required these days it’s getting to be a hassle even for ordinary women.
There are, and they’ve been used for thousands of years by other cultures. No society using alternatives has imploded as of yet.
Why a standard?
Seriously, why is that required?
Why not have every family work it out to their satisfaction?
Everyone needs a first name and a surname - how that happens who the hell cares? Everyone gets the husband’s name, or the wife’s name, or when two people get married they hyphenate or just plain make up a new name, who cares? Some Icelandic immigrant maybe keeps the tradition of patronymics (boys get dad’s first name with -son on the end, girl’s get dad’s name with -dottir on the end. Children of unknown paternity get mom’s name with those suffixes). Parents keep their own name and give a made up surname to the kids.
Why would that be a problem? What does it matter so long as no fraud is occurring?
You are aware that, at least in the US, anyone can change their legal name whenever they want? You don’t have to keep any of the names your parents gave you and you don’t have to get married to make a name change. You do have to make it official and it can not be done for fraudulent reasons, but names are not as immutable as people seem to think they are.
It’s already feasible for women to keep their maiden names. They just don’t fill out and change-of-name forms when they get married. What, you think there are name police or something?
There are people who agonize over how to fold napkins. Does that mean we should standardize napkin folding and deem only one method socially acceptable?
The only “agony” I suffered from my non-traditional decision was other people people being judgmental jerks about it and berating me for NOT taking the traditional route. If it wasn’t so ingrained it would never be an issue. It would be no more agonizing than deciding whether to have a blow-out wedding or elope.
Been married twice; kept my name both times because I like it better.
I’ve been at my current school for two years and everyone there thinks my husband is ‘Mr Boods’ mainly because it’s never occured to me to mention anything different. His family sends all of our xmas and anniversary cards to Mr and Mrs Fridgemagnet. It makes them happy, and it’s useful for my settlement application supporting documents, so ‘meh.’
We don’t have children, but his cats are listed at the vets as Amy Magnet and Schro Magnet.
I did give my ex a new named after we divorced, though.
So you carry your children’s birth certificates around everywhere you go? The whole point of a card would be to be able to provide proof at a moments notice.
When I divorced the first time, I kept my married name to match my 2 year old son. When I remarried and had another child, I hyphenated my first married name and second married name to be able to use either at their schools and social functions. (Although legally my name is my first married name) It has worked out fine. I actually never considered going back to my maiden name. That would have been far too complicated. Although an interesting thing happened when I was away with my daughter last weekend. We were at a restaurant and I dropped her at the door so I could park. There was a wait so she put the name on a list. I asked her what name she put (thinking it would be her first name) and she said my first married last name. I thought that was weird but since my business name and bills come in my legal name, maybe not so much.
All of this. In many cultures the names remain the same throughout life. Nobody bats an eye, the teachers are not surprised, nobody demands to know that the kids are or not the woman’s, etc. Actually, in some countries, if the mother and child share the same last name, it would be understood that the father is most likely out of the picture. Even if that assumption is incorrect (perhaps both parents decided to give the woman’s last name to the kid to keep a surname going).