Changing your name after marriage
What to do once the certificate arrives, in the order that works — Social Security, your license, your passport, and everyone else.
You need a certified marriage certificate before anything can start.
The certificate is not the license. The license is the permission to marry, issued before the wedding; the certificate is the record of it, issued afterward.
Social Security comes first, on form SS-5, and it is free.
Your state driver license comes next, and several states set a deadline for it.
Then your passport, then your bank, employer, insurers and everyone else — about forty notifications in total.
You do not need a court for any of this. The marriage is what authorized the new name.
The certificate, not the license
This trips up more people than any other part of the process. The marriage license is issued before the wedding and is the permission to marry. The marriage certificate is issued afterward and is the record that it happened.
Agencies want the certificate, certified, with a raised seal or a colored stamp. A photocopy is refused, and so is the decorative certificate handed out at the ceremony.
Where you order it differs by state. Some states hold marriage records centrally; most leave them with the county that issued the license.
What to do while the certificate is still in the mail
Certified copies routinely take two to six weeks by mail, and a great many people are in exactly that window. Nothing downstream can start until it lands, because every agency wants to see it.
What you can do meanwhile is order extras in the same request, work out which passport form applies to your dates, and write the list of accounts that will need telling. That is most of the thinking done before the envelope arrives.
The order after the certificate arrives
- Order three or more certified copies of the marriage certificate.
- Submit form SS-5 to Social Security. Free, and it has to be first.
- Wait a day or two for the Social Security record to propagate.
- Apply for your driver license or state ID. Check your state deadline.
- Update your passport on whichever form your dates put you on.
- Update your vehicle title, then your voter registration.
- Then banks, employer, payroll and HR separately, insurers, utilities and subscriptions.
Questions people ask
- Do I have to change my name after marriage?
- No. Nothing requires it, and a marriage certificate authorizes a change without obliging one.
- How long do I have to change my name after marriage?
- There is no federal deadline. Several states set one for the driver license specifically, and each state page prints that state’s figure with the date we checked it.
- Can I use my marriage license instead of the certificate?
- Usually not. Most agencies specifically require the certified certificate. A small number of states name the license in their own document list, which is noted on those states’ pages.
- What if I want to hyphenate or combine surnames?
- That is still authorized by the marriage certificate in most states, and the forms are the same. A few states limit which combinations they will print on a license, which is noted where it applies.
Requirements by stateCertified copiesThe full checklist
Everything above is free. Doing all of it is the work.
You can do all of this yourself with the links on this page — every underlying form is free. What we sell is the evening back: the official forms filled in from your answers, the steps in the order that works, and a written letter for every bank, employer and insurer you have to tell.
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