Right. And let me guess, around your parts, you can only go to the one in the county you live in, right?
I’m not actually sure whether I could go to another county or not. You used to be able to renew the license by mail in; but you couldn’t do that for real ID, and nobody seems to know whether it’ll be possible to renew the real ID by mail in or not.
In any case, going to another county would be a significant drive, and a significant chunk out of my day; and might only run into the same problems. This would be a major hassle for most people, and an effectively impossible one for some. Not everybody can take that much time off during working hours without risking losing their jobs, and/or risking not being able to pay essential bills due to the loss of income.
Nobody, repeat nobody, is saying that this process is difficult for everybody. It wasn’t, as it turned out, difficult for me. But I really don’t understand this insistence on the part of some people that it must be easy for everyone. It’s not; and it’s difficult to the point of near impossibility for some.
There are also changing social rules.
For example, about 100 years ago, when a woman got married she could (and often would) use “Mrs” in front of her husband’s name. For example, Sally Jones married John Smith and thenceforth might use “Mrs. John Smith” on legal documents and all she would have to do if asked to prove her right to do this is produce a marriage license. This was common in some parts of the US through at least the 1970’s.
Let’s say Mrs. John Smith, who is now in her 90’s, goes in to get her driver’s license/ID renewed. Keep in mind, she has used Mrs. John Smith for, perhaps, seventy years without problems. Now she is told no, you can’t do that, you shouldn’t have been doing that. Now, lady, what’s your REAL name? Is it
- Ms. Sally Jones
- Ms. Sally Smith
- Ms. Sally Smith-Jones
- Ms. Sally Jones-Smith
- Ms. Sally Jones Smith
At which point the old lady says “but - I’ve been Mrs. John Smith since 1958!” And the clerk says “No, you haven’t. That’s never been your legal name. What’s your legal name?”
But Mrs. Smith doesn’t have ANY documentation as options 2-5, and hasn’t used #1 since 1958 before she got married. NOTHING is in anything that would be accepted as a legal name by the DMV now. So the clerk asks to see the court order authorizing a legal name change. But Mrs. Smith has never done that - until 2005 she didn’t need to do that to legally use Mrs. John Smith.
It’s not a matter of losing documents or failing to do something - it’s that the rules changed at a certain point, and for people who had live decades, even a half century, under the old rules this is a problem because NONE of their documentation might fit the new rules and going back over decades and perhaps also over multiple states is time consuming, can be expensive, and it very disruptive.
This is a particular problem for women because until very recently (the 1990’s as best I recall) there was LOT of social pressure to use a married name. I mean, hell, I hyphenated back at the end of the 1980’s and thus did take my husband’s name and distinctly recall one incident in a bookstore with a cashier yelling “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, HUH? ISN’T HIS NAME GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU BITCH?” So very nearly EVERY married woman prior to about 1990 did NOT use the name on her birth certificate.
That’s a LOT of people.
I went to court (yesterday, in fact) to establish what my legal name should be. I’ve already had clerks declaring “You can’t do that with a divorce decree!” No, you can’t - but it’s not a divorce decree, it’s a court order. The assumption is still 1) when a woman marries she changes her name and 2) if she changes her name it’s due to either divorce or marriage. Well, lesson learned, going forward when I hand over the document I will simultaneously say “This is NOT a divorce decree and has nothing to do with marriage”,
On a happier note - when I went to the social security administration today I had no problems, indeed, I found the clerk both friendly and helpful. In addition to updating my legal name she also answered some questions I had about widow’s benefits (which I won’t be collecting for a few more years) and my own account/benefits. She did say that it was unlikely I’d have problems (my legal name does bear some relationship to the abomination on my RealID) but suggested that carrying a copy of the court document with me until everything was fully updated couldn’t hurt.
I’m fortunate in that my county has several branches from which to chose, but not everyone has that luxury.
At one point my case was bumped up to the state capital in Indianapolis (because I’m just that annoying, I guess :rolleyes: No, really, because my case was a bit different than what the branch had seen before and they wanted someone higher up to interpret the rules) So sometimes you wind up going higher than county… at least in Indiana. Since every state (and DC and Puerto Rico and Guam and…) has a separate department/bureau/whatever of motor vehicles the US is operating under more than 50 different bureaucratic entities for this issue.
The problem is not that she used Mrs. John Smith on legal documents- I’ve seen enough old bank books , deeds, paychecks, union cards, etc to know that Mrs. John Smith was used socially - those bank books and deeds either said “Mary Smith” or " John Smith and his wife (Mary)" or something similar for deeds. The problem is many women “of a certain age” did not have ID. They didn’t need it. They didn’t drive, their husbands did. They didn’t leave the US so they didn’t need passports and they lived fine without any ID - until suddenly, in the last 20 years they began to need ID for all sorts of things, even to ride a bus that passes through a federal office complex. * So now here they are at 75 years old, they got married in 1965 and changed their name and have to track down the certificate over 50 years after the last time they needed it.
ACLU Defends Bus Rider Who Refused to Show ID : NPR
And it also used to happen for men’s first names- government entities used to recognize that Jimmy was a nickname for “James”, so if your driver’s license said “Jimmy” and your birth certificate said “James”, it wasn’t a problem. Now, they won’t even accept that “Mary Smith” and “Mary A Smith” are the same person.
And for all the crap I got for not changing my name at all when i got married in 1987, apparently the fact that I didn’t even hyphenate prevented people from making up their own name for me.
I’ll be happy to say the problem is multi-factorial.
Until 2005, or whenever, you didn’t need to do anything to legally use any name whatsoever, as long as you weren’t doing so for purposes of fraud.
I’ve been using, for something over forty years, as my first name, a version of my middle name that’s different enough that many people don’t recognize it as being the same name as the Anglicized middle name on my birth certificate. I wish, now, that I’d gotten it legally changed back when I had one bank account, one library card, and a SSN number, and absolutely nothing else it would have needed changing on. It’s way too complicated now – and, from what I’m hearing, it might not have helped much if I had, because I don’t know that I’d have bothered coming up with a middle name to use. Some of my ID – library cards, name associated with the farm for other than tax purposes, etc. – uses the name I actually use. Some of it uses the name the passport and SSN and – luckily – the driver’s license have on them. I could pull out of my wallet right now at least two pieces of ID under either name. Until, maybe it was 2005, two or three different banks that I used during that time were perfectly happy recognizing both names as being the same person. It didn’t matter. Not only did men whose birth certificates said James use Jimmy, some of them used Bud, or whatever nickname they’d picked up along the way and become known by. Maybe Mary A Smith, for reasons only known to her family, had become known as Susan back when she was six. Bud and Susan might just be Bud and Susan their whole lives; up until the paper had to put the nickname in the obituaries because otherwise nobody would have any idea who they were talking about.
Gaah. Way too late to edit. This post brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
Just because…
… as of yesterday, the document that let’s me into an airport (my RealID) and the document that let’s me actually take the controls of an airplane (my pilot’s license) once again officially match. Also got my address updated with the FAA.
YAY!
Only two banks and my pension plan to go and I’m all caught up! Banks will be either today or tomorrow, I’ll the get the information to my pension folks this week as well. Well, except for the utilities and the lease, but those folks don’t seem to care very much as long as the checks I send them don’t bounce.
For the FAA and the name I had to go in person to a flight standards district office. Apparently the FSDO in South Bend, IN no longer exists (it’s been a few years since I needed to contact one) so I had a choice of either DuPage, Illinois or Indianapolis, IN. Although Indy is a bit further by miles the actual time to get there is the same or shorter when you take into account Tollway traffic. I decided more miles but less stress was the winner so Indy it was.
It’s not like I could complain. I mean, seriously, you’re a pilot and you’re complaining about traveling? 
Anyhow - took a friend to keep me company on the long ride and after my visit to the FSDO we visited the Indianapolis Speedway and the Museum which turned out to be a fun trip. Also, a mutual friend is a former Indy driver (took 3rd in 1960) so we had some fun looking him up in the Hall of Fame. (Damn, that track is HUGE! - TV does not truly convey the scale of it.)
I have officially made lemonade out of a lemon.
Also, the FAA guys said they’ve been seeing a lot of folks with this sort of problem coming into their offices. Despite the reputation of bureaucracies it was straightforward - dare I say easy? - to get this done. Of course, the fact I arrived with all needed documentation, copies of same, and the proper form properly filled out helped a whole lot, too. I think that’s part of why this whole thing stung so hard - normally I show up crazy-prepared and it works. With the RealID it didn’t.
While my shiny, new, updated FAA pilot’s license is actually another “crappy paper license” as referred to by someone pages earlier, it IS good for flying airplanes. If I had the money to do so, which I don’t at the moment. But, dammit, I earned it and I intend to keep it because maybe one day I’ll be able to get myself back in the air. The actual shiny new plastic one should arrive in the mail in the next couple weeks, meanwhile, the paper one is good for the next six months.
Anyhow, my saga is winding down. I do feel bad for the folks who are getting caught up in this along with me.
I went last month to renew my drivers’ license. I took my first test and got my license in July of 1977. I have not lived in another state since that time. I wanted to renew on the website like I did last time, but the rules state that I cannot. I showed up at TxDOT with my current license, proof of insurance, social security card, and the filled out application. I’ve had the same address since 2004.
When I got in line, the form checker came to me and reviewed my documents. She asked where my birth certificate was. I said “Your website clearly states that one is not needed if it’s already on file.” I don’t have a certified copy of my bc, the county where I was born requires you pick them up in person, have a family member pick it up, or hire a lawyer (350 miles away), and I knew I’d given them a certified copy when I’d changed my name back to my birth name.
So they pull me aside and start going through my files. “When did you move to the US? When did you become a citizen?” “The day I was born. I was born in Dawson Co, Texas.”
Mind you, my license already HAD the gold star on it. I’ve gone through this rigamarole before. Eventually, they find my bc in the file and seem very surprised that I was telling the truth: born in the USA fifty some odd years ago. WTF? It was far more of a hassle than I expected. And far less of a hassle than I would have had to go through if that sucker hadn’t already been on file. And remember, this was after 42 years of having a drivers’ license that already had the gold star on it. Ridiculous.
Texas started issuing Real ID compliant licenses in late 2016, so you couldn’t have had one for 42 years. Maybe old Texas licenses had a star on them, but it wasn’t the Real ID star.
Are you suggesting that there could be some species of star that is superior to the Texas Lone Star? That’s one step closer to secession.
Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small
You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.
– Dr Seuss
I’m thinking that when they allow you to change the gender on your birth certificate, they might also bring in rules that allow you to change the name on your birth certificate, and this might be a good thing.
What’s even more fun is that for Georgia, the DL must be Real ID ACt compliant (have the star) so one can renew the thing online. I’m a bit miffed. Evidently, I got my DL in 2012 before the state became compliant that year. Now I cannot renew online. Bit of a hassle, what with me being overseas and not scheduled to be back there until almost three months after my current license expires this November. 
I was under the impression that the stars at night, are big and bright.
Deep in the heart of … no? nah, I must be mistaken.
On topic, the boyfriend wants to take a trip within the next couple of years that’s gonna require a passport. Hoo boy, am I dreading that task - and reminded of that dread each time this thread resurrects!
I have a U.S. passport, but that sucker expired over a decade ago. My birth certificate is a.) in my parents’ safe deposit box, and we ain’t on speakin’ terms, and b.) not issued by any county in the U.S. plus also is not in English, being furriner born.
Every time I contemplate getting a new passport I get that heavy feeling of dread/anxiety/depression and have to console myself with a reminder that this is Future Purplehorseshoe’s problem.
Hawaii now uses the star on its driver’s licenses, but it had not yet when we moved back here in 2016 and I got my Hawaii license and the wife her state ID. But while licenses issued now have the star, the public has been told that at least for now, not to bother renewing early just to get the star. But even if it were absolutely required, showing your passport is supposed to trump the absence of a star.
You do not need your birth certificate to renew your passport. You can use your expired passport as proof of citizenship. Also, it doesn’t matter what your parents are dong with the birth certificate; the original is and will remain with whatever the jurisdiction where you were born calls their vital statistics office. You can get a certified copy of the birth certificate from them. Way back in my military passport agent days, I used this site to help people get certified copies of birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, and divorce decrees. That outfit used to have information for other countries, too.
By the way, many people are under the impression that the document from the hospital is their actual birth certificate. It’s not. The legal one is the one the government holds. The government issues certfied copies of that.
But if you were born overseas, as I was, to American citizens, then you will have a Consular Report of Birth Abroad. If you no longer have that in your possession or you want replacement for it, you apply to the State Department’s passport vital records section. Also, the foreign birth certificate is not proof of US citizenship, so it has no real bearing on the passport issue (sorry abou the pun).
In short: no need to talk to your parents.
p.s. If you were naturalized, here is how to replace that certificate.
I’ve had a driver’s license in the state of Texas for 42 years. When I moved in 2017, I got a replacement license with my address it had the Real ID star as indicated from the TXDot website:
https://www.dps.texas.gov/DriverLicense/federalRealIdAct.htm