I have two children from a previous marriage. Said marriage ended 30+ years ago. I recently found out that my two children have the last name of the man my ex married. She claims he never adopted them, yet they have his last name. Can childrens names be legally changed without the consent of the biological father?
If you just found out about it, I doubt you were in a position to object at the time. And the custodial parent would have had say here, from what I understand of it.
A shared custody situation would require a change to various agreements, as the children are named in these. A judge would have to approve that.
I am not a lawyer, though, so what I say cannot be taken as definitive.
Were they changed when they were children or did they change the name as adults? You say the marriage ended 30+ years ago, which means these “children” are at least 31 years old, if they were born when you were still married to her.
How is it that you didn’t even know about this until recently? Were you not involved in their lives after the divorce?
Yes, they were both born before the divorce. The last I had heard, my daughter was 12 (now 38) and her last name was still the same as mine.
About a year after the divorce, they all moved to another state and she denied me visitation rights. After that I lost track of where they were until just recently.
So like I said - you weren’t in a position to object.
Right or wrong - you weren’t there to stop it happening, so it happened. Who was the system going to ask about the name change of a minor child? The custodial parent - and there was only one to ask.
Were their names changed by your ex as children, or were they changed by them as adults? What they actually know about the reasons for you not being in their lives the last 26 years is unknown to you. If their mother was telling them that it was your decision not to be involved, they very well may have decided as young adults (starting at around 16 or so) to change their names to that of the person they perceived to be their father.
As Mr. Moto says, you were in no position to protest either way, but the implications and motivations are different in each case.
A name change for a minor does indeed require the consent of both parents. But if the non-custodial parent is absent and cannot be located, then paperwork can be filled out allowing the name change anyway. Like an adult name change, the judge might require publication of the intent to change name in local newspapers, presumably to notify the non-custodial parent.
and didn’t need her biological father’s permission. This is Wisconsin.
Common law name changes happen all the time with no judge involved. For instance, a woman gets married and changes her last name. There is no official “Change of Name” hearing. She just changes her name on her driver’s license, then uses that to make changes everywhere else her name appears. The DMV does not request a copy of a marriage certificate or anything more than a change of name form and the fee.
For most children, the only documents would be school records.
My husband has used his step dad’s name for most of his life. He only made it “official” this year so I could take the name too when we married. It just took £30 and a phonecall. Befefore that he was using the name without any problems. He was even able to get a driving licence in the name he used. They accepted a letter from his mother as proof.
His mum didn’t need permission from his bio-dad to change his name. Not that he was around much anyway.
If you were in England at the time you could have saved yourself £30 and the cost of a phone call. Under English law your name is what you say it is. The practice of “changing your name by deed poll” only exists because it’s sometimes useful to have a document to show to bank managers, employers and so on. There was a legal judgement back in the nineteenth century, I can’t remember the exact wording but the judge said something like “If a person adopts a new name and is generally known to the world by this name, it becomes his name as surely as if he had had an Act of Parliament passed to bestow it upon him”.
My name was changed when I was 4. That was slightly different because my bio father doesn’t know he has a child. I don’t know what all they did to attempt to notify him but it certainly is possible to make the change without consent. (They didn’t really have my consent either, but that’s neither here nor there)
My sister is on her 3rd husband and each time she changed her name on her licence PennDot insisted on seeing a copy of her marriage certificate/divorce decree. Marriage #2 only lasted six months, and she ended up switching back to her maiden name less than 2 months after getting everything switched over to her married name. :smack:
I was in England at the time. The £30 was for the deed poll certificate. He’d managed 22 years without it. He’s been on his mum’s passport, opened bank accounts, taken out student loans and had a driving licence. All under the name he uses. But when we wanted to get married we had to pay the £30 to avoid ending up as Mr and Mrs previous name.
I changed my last name to the name of the stepfather who raised me (with my mother) from the age of three as part of an adult adoption process to which I consented at the age twenty-one (when my youngest sibling turned eighteen - so we could do all the paperwork at the same time). I had gone by his name throughout most of my childhood, but we could not make the final legal change (although all of my school records, my drivers license, and my social security card had been recorded with my stepfather’s surname – it was the 70s and the early to mid 80s; identity was kinda laxly enforced). I could not get a passport under my stepfather’s name without potentially having to notify my biological father, so I waited to travel internationally until after the adult adoption (which was as much to solidify the chain of inheritance, even though there is a will; stepdad is kind of a suspenders and a belt kind of guy when it comes to documentation). Of course, I married about four months later and took my husband’s surname, so I was only legally known by what I think of as my maiden name for those four months.
I’m not sure what the OP’s issue is, really. In thirty years, the change of name is the least of the changes you’ve missed that ought to concern you…if you have any interest in your children at all.
I changed my oldest son’s last name when he was 2 years old.
I changed it from my (maiden) last name to his father’s last name at the request of his father after we reconciled. I went alone to the Court of Records however, so I did not need his father’s consent. All I needed (in New Brunswick, NJ) was some form of ID (my driver’s license) and fifteen dollars.
As has already been pointed out, this seems to vary by state.
Also, the Social Security Administration and the State Department (passport) both require a marriage license to explain why a woman’s name is different from her birth certificate.
I can believe that it varies by state. I don’t recall turning in anything to change the name when I moved to Ohio in the seventies. I know that California just wants the form and the fee. When I went back to my maiden name, in the eighties, a lot of people told me that was illegal, or that I’d be hassled. But I guess I did it late enough that folks were used to the idea. Or they assumed I was making the change because I had gotten married.
DMV in California will let you change your name for whatever reason you wish. Marriage/divorce is not a requirement.
I don’t recall turning in anything to SSN, neither when I married nor when I re-assumed my maiden name. I’ve been working with PERS retirement plans for long enough that I may not qualify for SS payments anyway.
Haven’t tried to get a passport yet. Glad to know that if I did, I’ve got one less document to produce.
Which all goes to prove my point - it’s the name he uses that is his real name, *not *the one he had originally and discarded. If a name is “official” enough to be on a British Passport without the need for a deed poll certificate, it’s “official” enough to be on a marriage certificate on the same basis.
Who told you this? I believe they were wrong.
The guy at the council who does the ‘notice of marriage’ did. I suppose other councils may do it differently. However he wanted a deed poll certificate.