What do I need before I start?
Roughly what you would take to a counter: your details, your current ID, and the list of organizations that need telling. You never upload a document.
The interview asks for what the official forms ask for, and no more than that. Most people have all of it to hand already.
- Your name exactly as it reads now, and your new name exactly as you want it printed.
- Your date of birth and where you were born.
- Where you live, and the state whose license or ID you hold.
- Your current driver license or ID — which state issued it, and its number where your state’s form prints one.
- Your parents’ names — the SS-5 asks for them, and it is the question people are least expecting.
- What is printed on the document that changed your name: the date, and where it was issued.
- The organizations that need telling — banks, your employer, insurers, utilities, subscriptions. Anything you have an account with in your former name.
What we never ask for
- Your Social Security number. We do not collect it, store it, or print it — the boxes that ask for one arrive blank, with a callout naming the exact box to write it in.
- Your certificate, decree, or order. There is nothing to upload. We ask what is printed on it; we never read it for you.
- A password. There is no account to create.
The list of accounts is the part worth thinking about before you sit down. It is the difference between eleven letters and the four you remembered.
Next
Other questions people ask
When you’re ready to do it
Two questions about your situation first, because there is one answer that means we can’t help — and we would rather tell you that before you pay than after.
Start — from $49
One payment. No subscription.