How do I send the notification letters?

1. Follow the checklist timing. It puts Social Security first and the notification letters later; the letters themselves do not claim that another record has already changed.
2. Fill the blank date space with the date you sign and send that letter.
3. Print the letter and sign it above your typed name. We never sign anything and never simulate a signature.
4. Enclose what the letter lists — a photocopy of the document that changed your name, and a photocopy of photo ID in your new name where you hold one. The enclosure list at the foot of each letter is the authority; it names only what you actually have.
5. Address the envelope. If you gave us the organization’s mailing address during the interview, the letter already carries it; if you didn’t, write it in the space under the organization’s name — look on the organization’s website first, because the address printed on a bill is usually a payment processor rather than the department that keeps your records.
6. Keep what comes back. Most letters ask for written confirmation once the name change has been made. A retirement letter addresses beneficiary designations as well: after a marriage it asks the plan to confirm that your beneficiary designations remain as recorded; after a divorce or court order it asks for written confirmation of the name change and a current beneficiary designation form to review. Keep any reply for the next time somebody queries the name on an account.

Photocopies, not your certified copies. The certified originals are what the agencies want to see and several of them are slow to hand one back — a bank asking for evidence of a name change is asking for something it can keep in a file.

When another route is faster

Plenty of organizations will take the same information through a secure message in their app, at a branch, or on an upload page. If one of those is quicker for you, use it — the letter is still doing work, because it has your former name, your new name and the document that evidences the change already set out. Read from it or paste it in.

The date space is deliberately blank when your kit is built. Fill it when you sign and send each letter, so the page carries the date that belongs to that request.