Legal Question in Family Law in New York
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? New York
(I am not using real names to protect our identity)
My wife got married here in New York almost 7 years ago. Before getting married, her name was Julia Smith. My name was and still is Michael Jones.
On the marriage certificate, it is indicated that Michael Jones and Julia Smith were married... and it is also written in there that her new surname would be Jones (under her maiden name). This means that she officially changed her last name to mine at the time of marriage.
Well, over the past 6+ years, we have been so busy that we have never actually got around to changing her documents to reflect the new surname (including social security, passport, driving permit, bank accounts, student loans, etc...).
The time to make the change has come now but we now have one question:
She would like for her name to be Julia Smith Jones, with Smith being a middle name (no hyphen). Does the fact that we changed only her surname on the marriage certificate require that we need to go to court and change her name from Julia Jones to Julia Smith Jones?
All advice and help is much appreciated
1 Answer from Attorneys
Probably not since it is only a middle name. However, with tighter travel restrictions you may have to file an application to change the name. This is not a difficult proceedure and is relatively inexpensive.
Mike.
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