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Wedding Customs & Traditions Forum
Nati05
member
Adding to the name change discussion..
Well it's more like a couple of questions. I saw in the last name change thread some of you mentioned disliking (from personal experience) when mom has a different last name than her children. Why is that? What from your experience made this so terrible??
For those of you who have kept your maiden name, does not having the same last name as your family/ husband ever cause any legal problems, issues, confusions etc.? And I don't mean socially... people will always have their opinions. I just want to know about potential legal issues you may have encountered.
Finally, I see the idea of using H's last name socially thrown around quite often. In all seriousness, how do you do this? Obviously using your maiden name legally or professionally is pretty clear, but do you ever find yourself needing to you use your maiden name in other cases? For example with children's teachers at school... are you the same maiden last name as on children's school records, or socially H's last name? I'm really curious about how this works for each person.
Backstory if you're interested, I'm a dual citizen in the US and Ecuador. I'm currently living and getting married in Ecuador. Here I'm not required to change my name by any means and these days it's practically unheard of. My marriage will be valid in the US and while I still have to do a little more research on it, I'm pretty sure at some point I'll have to present my marriage and name in the US. I understand this is when I'll have to decide whether I'll keep my name or not. FI has no preference as it's never been part of his culture, in fact he feels I should keep my name because it's mine. However he does understand the importance it has in American culture and would like to avoid any possible issues keeping my name might include (if we decided to live and raise our children there that is) Basically he supports me either way 100%. I know it's a decision only I can make, I'd just like to hear from your personal experiences!
edited for clarity
For those of you who have kept your maiden name, does not having the same last name as your family/ husband ever cause any legal problems, issues, confusions etc.? And I don't mean socially... people will always have their opinions. I just want to know about potential legal issues you may have encountered.
Finally, I see the idea of using H's last name socially thrown around quite often. In all seriousness, how do you do this? Obviously using your maiden name legally or professionally is pretty clear, but do you ever find yourself needing to you use your maiden name in other cases? For example with children's teachers at school... are you the same maiden last name as on children's school records, or socially H's last name? I'm really curious about how this works for each person.
Backstory if you're interested, I'm a dual citizen in the US and Ecuador. I'm currently living and getting married in Ecuador. Here I'm not required to change my name by any means and these days it's practically unheard of. My marriage will be valid in the US and while I still have to do a little more research on it, I'm pretty sure at some point I'll have to present my marriage and name in the US. I understand this is when I'll have to decide whether I'll keep my name or not. FI has no preference as it's never been part of his culture, in fact he feels I should keep my name because it's mine. However he does understand the importance it has in American culture and would like to avoid any possible issues keeping my name might include (if we decided to live and raise our children there that is) Basically he supports me either way 100%. I know it's a decision only I can make, I'd just like to hear from your personal experiences!
edited for clarity
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Adding to the name change discussion..
As for how it works socially, I just don't correct people when they call me Mrs. Husbandslastname.
[QUOTE]I haven't run into any problems with my daughter having FI's last name. We gave her FI's last name because we knew we were getting married eventually and we both agreed that we want to share one common family name. I haven't run into any problems at daycare or the pediatrician. We had to take her into the ER once and they had no issue either. They have my legal name on file, never questioned it. If there ever was a question I can show that I am listed on the birth certificate. Sometimes the pediatrician's office calls me Mrs. HisLastName, I don't correct them because it doesn't bother me and I know they have the correct info on file. I do think schoos and any official documents should always have your legal name rather than what you like to be called socially.
Posted by mtbentley[/QUOTE]
We would probably do the same, give our children his last name. I have no problem with this. Glad to know things run smoothly for you, thanks for the info! :)
I am now remarried. New husband and the same last name I've had since the day I was born. It works quite nicely. And, yes, sometimes, people call me Mrs. Husband's LastName; sometimes, people call him Mr. My LastName. Neither of us have a problem with it.
The only variation on the theme which bothers me is being called Mrs. My LastName -- that's just gross and weird -- because that's either my mother or my grandmother. LOL!
I don't mind having a different last name from my children. Plenty of never-married or divorced parents have different last names than their children. Schools are used to dealing with that. A parent's official name will be on school records. And if a teacher sent my kid home with someone just because that person had the same last name, I'd be livid!
I know people who have hyphenated their children's names, alternated last names (child 1 gets mom's last name, child 2 gets dad's last name, etc), or given 1 name to all the children.
I wanted to combine our last names into a new last name for our children, but my husband vetoed it. They will have my last name as a second middle and his last name, as a compromise. But if they ever ask why boys last names are more important than girls' last names, he can answer that question.
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But, it never created any kind of problems with schools, doctors, etc. Sometimes, when people met her for the first time through me, they would assume she had the same last name as me and refer to her as such. She would either gently correct them or, if she knew she wouldn't be seeing them again, not bother.
I would say that more difficulties came from having a different name than my stepfather; even though he was just as much a legal guardian as my mom or dad, people often assumed he was not my parent. But I can't remember it ever being more difficult than explaining that he was a step-parent.
Now that I'm married, I'm trying the whole "married name socially, maiden name legally" thing. It hasn't really created any problems as of yet, but we'll see how I feel about if/when we have kids, who will get their father's last name.
Personally, I want my FI's name because I like the idea of being the ____ family. It just gives me that connection with him and my future kids. Not that you wouldn't have a connection without the same name of course, but that's what I prefer for myself.
As for situations I've seen, I haven't seen it being a big problem. My friend has two kids. One has her last name (father wasn't really in the picture after she got pregnant) and the other has her FI's last name. As far as I know, there haven't been any issues with it. Her daughter is hyphenating her last name when mom gets married. She's 8, and that's what she wanted. She said "I'm a Smith, but I want to be a Johnson too" (not real last names). So that's an option for kids in the future if you want to use both names.
Someone mentioned knowing a couple that both changed their names.. I know a couple like that too. He had a lot of issues with his dad, and although the last name he had was super common, he didn't want it anymore. So he chose his grandmother's maiden name (I think, something like that), and that is his wife's married name. I know that's not really what the post was about but I wanted to mention that I've seen the same thing!
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Now that I'm older, I don't really care. And I took my H's last name
My mom remarried when I was 5 (In 1989), took my step-dad's last name, and then had 2 more kids right away (And then adopted another one when I was 18). So I grew up in a family where my parents AND most of my siblings had a different last name ... our family was/is known as "The Smith Family", while my last name was "Jones".
It never bothered me, never caused any problems with school or doctors or anything like that, because I most certainly wasn't the only kid in my shoes at the time. My bio-dad wasn't really involved with my life, I was always considered a part of the family, most people didn't even realize that I and my older sister had a different last name than everybody else (Or that our "dad" was really our step-dad).
The only real "impact" this had on me was it made me realize how unimportant a last name actually is to me, what matters to me is the actual family. I took DH's name, because I really wasn't all that attached to my maiden name ... it just didn't matter to me.