Can I start before my document arrives?
Yes. You can answer everything and get your kit while the certified copy is still in the mail, and the kit carries a note about the document you are still waiting for.
Nothing downstream can start until you hold a certified copy of the document that changed your name, because every agency wants to see one. Ordering those copies often takes weeks, and a great many people are in exactly that window — the event has happened, the paperwork is in transit.
That is not a reason to wait. Everything the kit does — reading the forms, working out which passport form your dates put you on, listing the accounts that need telling, writing the letters — is thinking that can be done before the envelope arrives. The day it lands, you sign and send.
What the kit does differently while you wait
- It asks which document you are waiting on, and says so on the pages where it matters rather than assuming you have it in hand.
- It names the office that issues certified copies in your state and links to where the request goes.
- It puts ordering the copies at the top of the checklist, ahead of every step that depends on it.
Order more than one copy while you are there. Social Security, your state license agency and the passport agency each want to see one, they do not all return them quickly, and extra copies in the same request cost less than a second request later.
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.
One payment. No subscription.