I had my name legally changed a few weeks ago, which is a relief because my old drivers license basically stopped working. When I went to adopt my cats the woman at the Humane Society took one confused look at my license and immediately told me “this isn’t you.”
I’m honestly surprised at just how easy the entire process has been. I was in front of a judge for a whole 30 seconds, just long enough to verify my old name, age, and that I’ve been living in the county for at least a year. Easy!
I’ve heard that the difficult part of a legal name change is updating everything afterwards, but that part hasn’t been too bad (so far). The Social Security Administration office took about 45 minutes to work through, and there were only 3 people in front of me at the Secretary of State. In a little over an hour I had updated my Social Security card, drivers license, car title and car registration.
I have been visiting as many places in person as I can, and showing my court papers in person. The longest part is usually waiting for my turn in line and actually talking to a representative to update my account takes less than 5 minutes. This was way better than I was expecting, but I suppose it helps that I am doing all of this over the holidays when I have extra time.
I can already tell that updating the deed to my condo is going to be more challenging. The county Register of Deeds told me that I would have to find a title company and have the deed redrafted, which hopefully won’t take too long. I am not expecting this change to be free.
I am going to tackle updating my name at work (and therefore with my health insurance company) after New Years. I hope everything goes smoothly!
