If a husband and wife divorce and the wife took her husband’s surname at marriage, can the husband then force the wife to stop using his name?
since a person (USA) can change their name to just about anything then the answer would be no. also it was her name too.
The same would apply in the UK.
In most places you don’t even need to formally change your name can call yourself whatever you like so without filling in any paperwork. The formal name change is just so it can be printed on passports and other official documents.
However, it depends on the motivations and the likely consequences. A person can not change their name to assist in fraud or to mislead others and, in most jurisdictions, they can’t change their name if it is likely/intended to create confusion or uncertainty, even if it isn’t strictly fraudulent.
So while the wife can keep whatever name she likes, if she is doing so to deceive people into thinking she is still married so that she can obtain some benefit, or if that is a likely outcome, then the issue wouldn’t be so clear cut.
If she’s just keeping the name out of habit then no problem.
Like Tina Turner, after she divorced Ike Turner?
No.
(J/K)
When my folks divorced in the 60’s, my mother claimed that my father demanded that she take back her maiden name as part of the divorce.
She once said, “I have five children, and my maiden name”.
But, she sometimes didn’t speak the truth.
She could have spoken the truth. Your father could have very well demanded that she drop his name. Doesn’t mean that he had a legal basis for his demand, but he still could have demanded it.
He could have offered something like an increase in alimony (NOTE: I have no idea what sort of negotiations the posters parents had or whether alimony was involved, just saying, negotiations during divorce can get creative).
You really can call yourself whatever you want. My mother was a widow when she married my stepfather, and she still uses my father’s last name. She used her maiden name until she was 24, and then her first marriage name for 34 years of marriage, during which time she earned a Ph.D, was a professor, and published several books and numerous articles in several languages. She still occasionally writes an article, and so she wants to keep what she considers her “professional” name. My stepfather had no problem with it whatsoever.
I also know to people named Goldman and Brunstein who decided after they got married to call themselves “Sienna.” “Brun” means “brown,” and Sienna is sort of a gold-brown color. It saves the kids being hyphenated. I don’t know what they’d do if they got divorced, but the kids would still be Siennas.
I also know someone with a long Italian name whose maiden name was something like Jones, and wanted it back when she got divorced, but the judge told her her that because she had children, she wasn’t allowed to resume her middle name, so she wouldn’t have a different name from her children. What did she know? she believed him. Four years later, she had another child out of wedlock, who ended up with her ex-husband’s name, because that was still her name.
A far as going around using virtually anything you want, though, the military makes you use what is on your birth certificate, with the exception that if you have a hyphenated name, they make you pick one, or use them both without the hyphen, if it’s possible. (If it’s Smith-Ellis, you could end up “Smithellis.”) But if you have gone by your middle name virtually all your life, you are still going to be Firstname Middleinitial Lastname in the Army. If you have used a nickname since birth, forget trying to get the Army to use it on any of your paperwork.
Same with passports. If there is a spelling error on your birth certificate, have it corrected before you join the Army.
My wife had kept her ex husband’s last name. The rain being is that she has for children and she wanted to maintain the same name as them. Never bothered me.
My mother kept my dad’s name until the last of us were out of the house, then went back to her maiden name.
Right. I can demand a million dollars. Doesn’t mean I’ll get it.
IIRC back in ye olden days of fault-only divorce some jurisdictions allowed a court to prevent the women from using her husband’s name after the divorce if she was the guilty party, but no state has laws like that on the books anymore. Though I suppose it possible for a divorcing couple to voluntarily write "wife must stop using married into a binding divorce settlement and have it enforced.
My wife and step-daughter did the same. No bother for me either.