meauxna

Except for that 'underwear on the outside', you're practically vanilla ice cream.
I'm talking serious internet crazy folk, we had some awesome regulars, and entertaining brawls.. it used to be a veritable Roman Circus in here!

ian-mstm

Rome... hmm... that's a city in... oh, what's the name of that country? I might like to retire there one day... herein thereafter!

Ian

meauxna

Yes!
hadn't even been thinking of that one, even better!

Malashaan

Note to self, must try harder.
*waves a kipper*

Hiro11

My wife kept her last name. We thought about it for maybe five seconds.

Malashaan

Quick update. Although our "wedding" isn't until November 14th, we were married by my father-in-law (who is a Justice of the Peace) on Sunday. Technically I'm a married man, although I don't think I'll feel it until we've had the big event next month.

Anyway, we went to the bank and Social Security office today and things are getting rather complicated. The bank can't do anything at all without a SSN, which I was half expecting. They apparently can't even add me as a second user on my wife's account so I'm totally without money - fun

The Social Security office told me that he couldn't start the process of issuing a SSN until Homeland Security were aware that I had changed my name through marriage. We then tried to get my wife issued a SS card in our married name and he couldn't do that either. Apparently she can take my name or hyphenate both out names but she can't take on our choice of blended/hybrid name without going through the probate court procedure. I'm starting to wish I'd just decided to take her name, but even then I couldn't get a SSN apparently :-/

I'm spending this evening with my AOS pack. Will filling the forms in using my new married name be ok if I provide the marriage license? It sounds from what the SS office was telling me that I can't use that name legally yet.

ian-mstm

You do not need a SSN. What you do need is a "unique identifier" and your passport provides that. Speak to a manager... not a teller. If the manager says no, let him know that you'll be going elsewhere and will then be informing the local media.


Not true - and an overtly discriminatory practice on their part. They would not require this of a foreign woman who changes her name after marriage.


Yes.


This is the US... you can use *ANY* name you want as long as your intent is not to defraud. Besides... USCIS doesn't derive their policy from what SSA plebes say!

Ian

Malashaan

There are quite a few related but distinctly separate issues involved. The one I really can't find reliable information about is exactly what name change option are available to us with the marriage certificate. My name is Kind, my SO's is Marro. Our initial plan was to change both our names to Kindarro. At the SS office the guy appeared to be willing to do it but apparently their computer system only gave him the option of changing my name to hers, hers to mine or hyphenating for one or both of us. I didn't see what he was looking at but after entering a few details on the computer he came back to us and told us we'd have to go through the legal name change process with a probate court to do what we wanted. I've since tried to find out more about this on the internet and just found vague references which appear to back this up, phrases like "if you've been more creative with your choice of last name you may need to pursue separate legal name-changing procedures" seem abundant.

As far as using my name of choice goes, I want to agree with you Ian but I'm having real trouble generating any confidence that USCIS will accept me using a name for which I don't have a passport or birth certificate in and which another government office (SS) has already indicated they don't recognise. Looking at the previous threads on this issue which were more "normal" (in that one party was changing their name to that of the other) it already seems that the general advice is to wait until applying for citizenship rather than trying to change names mid-immigration process.

I've been reading around this forum and others and it's really hard to tell exactly what the situation is. It clearly is discriminatory but there seems to be a number of cases out there where the man changing the name has raised eye-brows with USCIS officers. The situation isn't helped that here in Vermont the marriage license doesn't say anything about married names on it. Reading around lots of people in other states seem to be saying that once they showed their marriage license with their new name on they didn't have a problem, but the marriage license here doesn't have that option - it only lists our pre-marriage names and states the date and place we were married as well as by whom.

ian-mstm

Your options are not limited to what the software allows. There are overrides available.


Well, this is always an option for you.


There's still time to fix this! Your marriage license, of course, only shows your pre-marriage names... but you can have your marriage certificate reflect your new names. You have to specifically request it, but the officiant shouldn't have any real problem with doing that. Indeed, write down on a piece of paper exactly how you'd like the names to appear on the certificate. Then, you take the marriage certificate - a legal document registered with your county/city - to SSA and give it another go.

I'll add here, that even if you can't get evidence of your names as you want them to appear, you can still use the names you like. As long as you're not trying to defraud, you can call yourself anything you want.

Ian

S Folinsky

Makes me think about the current Alcalde de Los Angeles.

meauxna

Mal, in my opinion, if you are still within your first 76 days of admission, you should shake tail to the SSA and get your SS account NOW in your immigration name (matches the visa) while you can.
You can change the name later on while you work this out, but if you don't get your SS application in on time, you're going to wish you had.

The bank can too help you; the person you spoke to chose not to.

Malashaan

Thanks for the input everyone. I'd come to the same conclusion meauxna - we decided to keep our names unchanged for now and make a change later if we still want to. We probably will because we both want a "family name" and we don't want to pick one name over the other...and we reckon hyphenating either way round sounds crap with our names

I'd heard about the Villaraigosas, one of the reasons I thought this would be straight-forward, but apparently bureaucracy continues to be an obstacle when one's combining immigration and marriage. I'm amazed at the general level of "getting the law completely wrong" which exists amongst US officials. Today's fun was trying to convince civil surgeons that I didn't need a full medical