I’m peeved, but would rather at least try to start this here rather than dive straight to the Pit.
I’m reviving some content in a previous thread of mine, because I learned something that just irks me some more in light of name-changing fees and hoops that my partner and I are likely facing in our marriage equality adventures.
If a heterosexual couple gets married, and the bride changes her last name to his, but then they have the marriage annulled, she can keep the new last name and there is no retroactive attempt to recover the fees or insist on the court clearance process that would have applied had she tried to change her name outside of marriage.
If the Federal Government is going to pull the crap in the stories linked in that other thread with respect to homosexual partnership name changes when dealing with Social Security and passports, does it not follow that, in the case of heterosexual marriage annulments they should be:
a) reverting any change of name
or
b) require payment of the fees charged to everyone else outside of marriage if the party wishes to keep the last name of their annulled former spouse
and
c) require all court clearance procedures that apply to name changes outside of marriage.
This rant brought to you by the assumption that the people quoted in the aforementioned linked stories would have been able to satisfy the Social Security and passport requirements for change of name if they had compromised their principles and gone through the process of name change outside of federally recognized marriage with fees and court clearance procedures, etc…
Well, you’re really getting partnered just for the free name change, right? So it’s only fair for the government to close this loophole to prevent everyone from changing their name for free? Am I right or what? :dubious:
Irony of all ironies, my source of information on this double standard is…my wife.
Her marriage was annulled but she kept his last name because she liked it better than her maiden name and didn’t want to deal with the hassles of changing everything over when she was single, etc. Oh…and to keep the feds off her trail from knocking over that bank in Albuquerque when she was a wild and crazy 18 year old.
Maybe it’s just late here, but I’m confused… You’re talking about not being able to just walk in and change your name at Social Security after marriage - like we were discussing in the other thread, right?
Yes, that is what I want to be able to do. My agenda is not to lead a call to action to suck the money out of the pockets of the annulled. My agenda is to point out that there are some interesting precedents for the federal government being lenient with its own rules for some, but doggedly insisting that those rules be followed by others.
Have you found instances where they let Lesbian or Gay couples change their names? The whole thing is a screw-up… Dear GOD, I hope our next president can get DOMA repealed, so we can actually get some rights at the Federal level…
I have not yet spoken to, read about, or been assured by government agents about any same-sex couples who have experienced the cost and bureaucracy being waived for one or both partners to change their names with all necessary government entities here in the States. I am hardly doing an exhaustive research campaign, though, and I’m not giving up hope yet. Times they are a changin’, and this summer is sure to be interesting. I still just need to ask some questions to the right people over the phone or at some service windows.
I just want a definitive answer to a few simple questions about what we can expect when we have our marriage license in hand and we initiate the process to change both of our last names.
