Legal Question in Family Law in California
When a couple divorces and the wife chooses to keep the husbands name, when she remarries can she legally keep the ex-husbands name and not take the new husbands name?
2 Answers from Attorneys
There are no laws that says that an ex-wife must use any particular name or stop using a particularly name. There was a guy recently in Massachusetts that was his by a car. The name on his driver's license: Lord Jesus Christ. While it may not make much for an ex-wife to keep using the name of her divorced husband, she can do so.
Mr. Starrett is right, there is no legal prohibition against her using the former married name in her new marriage. From a practical sense, it may not make the new husband feel very secure, but as someone pointed out the other day, that is an Ann Landers' response.