Last name situation

Scott510

my fiancé has a weird last name situation with his family and so wants to change his last name and I would ultimately become Mrs. Thatlastname. However, changing his name while he is in the military would be more than a littlebit of a pain in the butt and so he's going to wait until he's out, which is roughly a year after our wedding. My question is should I wait a year until after we're married to change my last name? I don't want to upset him by not automatically taking his name, but I dont want to have to change it twice either.

firsttimersluck

I think you should sit down and discuss this with him, first of all. :P

BUT, I would say that if he is seriously contemplating changing his last name in the next year, that you should wait and change it with that. If HE doesn't even like his last name SO much that he wants to change it, then why would that upset him?
It's a hassle to go through the name change process, just because you have so many documents with your current name... I don't think you will want to change your last name legally, and EVERYTHING that goes with that... just to do it all over again in a year.
What would you change it to? His soon-to-be-when-he-gets-out last name? What happens if, in a year, you have that last name already, and he decides that he is over it and doesn't care anymore?
Sounds messy.. I would wait as long as he does.

kyrgyzstan

I'm not taking FI's last name at all, and he doesn't care either way. 

But I agree with Firsttimers. How have you guys not talked about this?

SamiJoeB

Step 1:Talk to him. For whatever reason, I've seen alot of guys get really touchy about this. Some guys, like in Stan's case are totally fine with whatever. My H wanted me to take his last name, and since it didn't change my initials, I was fine with it. (My Dad, GPa, GGPa, and myself all have the same initals, so it was important to me to keep them)

And FYI it's really not that much of a pain in the butt to change your name in the military. It took me maybe 20 minutes to fill out the paperwork, and it took maybe a little over a month to get it approved. I never changed it on my uniforms though because I separated from AD a little over a month after our wedding, and when I got the word that everything was official, I had like 8 days left.

Scott510

I know legally it probably wouldn't be much hassle but having to change his uniforms and since he's always called by his last name, it's just easier for him to wait. And yeah I know my FI and I need to actually talk about this, he just happens to be underway when it occured to me that he expects me to take his last name, but is changing it a year after our wedding

SamiJoeB

Name tapes are like $3. They can sew them on in an hour for $10...

email him while he's underway.