Every page of one kit.
This kit belongs to a sample person: Rosa, in Brooklyn, who married in June and carries a passport issued in 2019. Nothing below is a mock-up — these are the documents her answers produced, page for page, as they arrive.
Yours is built the same way, from your answers: your state, what happened to your name, and the organizations you list. Different pages, same kit.
The kit is the same whichever way your name changed. A divorce decree and a signed court order produce this same set of documents — the same forms, the same checklist, the same letters — with your own document named on them in place of hers. Rosa had to be somebody, and every sample has to pick one.
What’s in it
| Document | Pages |
|---|---|
| Ordered checklist | 11 pages |
| Social Security · SS-5 | 1 page |
| License and ID sheet | 3 pages |
| State form · MV-44NC | 3 pages |
| Passport sheet | 3 pages |
| Notification letters | 9 pages |
| Rosa’s kit, in full | 30 pages |
You’ll see your own checklist — and a watermarked page of the real document — before you’re asked to pay for anything.
Your name change, in order
The whole sequence on one document: what to do, in what order, what it costs, how long each step takes, and the deadline where there is one. Every step says why it sits where it does — Social Security before the DMV, the DMV before the passport. Rosa’s runs to thirteen steps.
Social Security, filled in
The Social Security Administration’s own PDF with the answers already in it — the actual form, not a lookalike we drew, so a clerk sees exactly what they expect to see. Three things are left for the pen: your signature, the date, and your Social Security number. We never ask for the number, so it never touches our servers — the kit names the exact box to write it in.
Your download is SSA’s complete official PDF, instruction pages and all. The application page is the one shown here.
Your state’s license and ID, in detail
Which form, what it costs, how long you have, what to bring, and whether it can be done by mail — with the date we last checked it printed alongside, because agencies change fees without telling anyone. Rosa lives in Brooklyn, so hers is New York’s.
The state form, filled in too
Where a state publishes its own name-change form, it arrives completed the same way the SS-5 does. New York’s MV-44NC runs to three pages and Rosa’s answers are already on it. The sheet above names every box left for her, and says why each one was left.
The right passport form
DS-82, DS-11, or DS-5504 — which one applies turns on when the passport was issued and when the name changed, and sending the wrong one gets the application returned. Rosa’s passport is from 2019, which puts her on DS-82 and lets her renew by mail. The kit works out which of the three is yours.
One letter per organization
Banks, employer, HR and payroll, insurers, utilities. One letter each, stating the change and asking for the records to be updated, ready to sign and mail. Rosa listed nine organizations, so her kit holds nine letters.
The letters carry no letterhead of ours. They go out over your signature, to your bank and your employer, and how you wrote them is nobody’s business but yours.
That, with your answers in it.
Two questions about your situation, then the interview. You see your own checklist before you’re asked to pay for anything.
Build mine