Why I Never Even Considered Asking My Wife to Take My Name
I'm not going to adhere to a tradition that feels designed to cause problems
I was married in Lima, Peru. My wife and I met when we were both working as English teachers at a local private school.
When you get married abroad you go through a slightly different immigration process than when you are married in the United States. My impression was that there are fewer legitimacy concerns if you can demonstrate you've been a resident of your spouse's home country for a significant amount of time.
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I've recently discovered that some people are unaware that there's no legal requirement to change your name once you get married. The name change is nothing more than a tradition that actually represents an unnecessary expense for a young couple.
From the moment I married a woman from another country, I knew that there would be certain complications. In the back of my mind, I'd been aware that the United States is hostile to immigrants, but I didn't recognize how hostile until I saw it firsthand.
Nobody enjoys going through any bureaucratic process. Even to get married, I had to gather up a variety of documents, have them validated, get them translated, and produce notarized copies. One of the documents I needed was a form that proved I was not already married in the United States.
Finally, I had to purchase a “permission to sign legal contracts” stamp for my passport from Peruvian immigration.
Frankly, gathering up all these documents is stressful and exhausting. But it became even more complicated when we elected to apply for a US visa.
Contrary to popular belief, marrying a foreign national does not guarantee residency. Marriage only provides you with the right to apply, but the government is under no obligation to allow anyone into the country.
My wife will be the first to tell you that I tend to stress out over these kinds of procedures. I'd already been through the process of gathering up my documents. Now, we had to do the same thing for my wife. It was another round of scavenging, translating, and notarizing.
The tradition in Peru is to use a hyphenated last name. The father's name comes first and the mother's name comes second. So you might meet people with the name “Garcia-Ortega.” Although the children's last name would also be “Garcia-Ortega,” they would commonly sign documents only as “Garcia.”
This creates an issue in that there are some legal documents in Peru that have both surnames, and some that only include the surname of the father. You might have both on a national identity card, but not on a passport or a college transcript.
In day to day life, this doesn't seem like a big deal. But when it comes to bureaucracy it often feels like whatever agent you're working with is just looking for an excuse to stamp “rejected” on your application.
I gathered up all the required paperwork and submitted the packet. I was fearful that there would be questions about the order and hyphenation of my wife's last name, but fortunately she was approved for her visa. We didn't run into problems until a few years later when she had to get her transcripts authenticated, and we found out the name had to match her government issued identification. The transcript only had her father's surname, but her US ID had both. Ultimately we just held our breath and sent it in and the agency took it without complaint.
Most of the time, this represents the kind of irritation that you can get sorted out eventually. Still, it's an aggravation because applications cost money and time. In the case of my wife's degree accreditation, we were trying to get her into an accelerated program that was about to start within the next few weeks. The application fees can be a couple hundred dollars, and it is no fun facing the prospect of having to pay that multiple times because of some absurd technicality.
I vaguely remember having a conversation with my wife about a name change shortly after having gone through the process of gathering up the documents that were required for our marriage.
“I don't want to give the government or any other authority another excuse to reject your paperwork,” I said. “Every process is always needlessly complicated and clumsy, and all it takes is one extra-motivated bureaucrat with a rubber stamp to send us back to the beginning again. If you keep your name, that's one less collection of papers we have to keep track of.”
Essentially, we took tradition and emotion out of the equation and did what was practical. Together, as a team, we selected the path that we perceived would create fewer complications in the long run.
A year later, we had a similar conversation about our kids.
“What do we do about the last name?” I asked.
“Yours,” my wife said.
“But why?”
By this time my wife had been in the United States for a couple of years, and she'd discovered what it's like here.
“Because people with your last name are less likely to be harassed in this country than people with mine.”
I have no particular affection for my last name. In fact, I wouldn't have been opposed to taking hers for both myself and the kids. But we took the path that we felt was least likely to create stressful obstacles.
Recently, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require people to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. There's been a lot of discussion about whether women who have changed their names because of marriage will be able to use a birth certificate to prove their citizenship. It's important to also note that with the attempted repeal of birthright citizenship, we might also be facing a future where a birth certificate will no longer be sufficient proof of nationality.
My eldest daughter is only a freshman in high school, but I've already had conversations with her about not taking the name of her partner if she should marry. Many people go through their whole lives without ever having to deal with bureaucracy, but when you do meet obstacles, they can be devastating.
It's never too early to start thinking about what might happen to you as you get older. If you spend half of your life paying into Social Security with one name, what kind of problems will a name change cause? What happens if you are referred to in a will in one name, and you change your name before that relative passes?
There's a temptation to dismiss these kinds of concerns, but I speak from experience when I say this kind of thing can become an enormous headache. We're already in an era of identity theft, why should you make it easier by deliberately creating confusion about your name?
No matter what I say, the biggest source of influence will be the fact that my wife kept her name. We've been married 15 years, and her keeping her last name has never once caused any issues.
About the worst thing that happens is that every now and then people assume that we're no longer together. My wife gently corrects the confusion with a smile. “We're still married, I just kept my last name. There's no requirement to change your name, and we didn't see any advantage in it. In fact, we only saw that tradition as an excuse to rob me of my rights.”
“Your husband must really love you,” is the most frequent response.
I do.
Based on what's going on today, I think we need a movement to empower women to return to the name on their birth certificate if that's what they choose. I always find myself reminding people that your marriage belongs to you. You are under no obligation to follow a tradition that doesn't work for you.
If you want to take your spouse's name, go ahead. That applies to men as well as women. If you want to go hyphenated, do that! If you want to create a completely new last name to celebrate your union, that option is certainly on the table as well.
Whatever you do, take some time to consider whether your choice might be leveraged against you by malicious bureaucrats in some unexpected future scenario. Unfortunately, we can't rely on our elected officials to act in our best interests.
I've taught my own daughters to protect themselves and their rights. Sometimes the mechanisms that are used to strip our rights are disguised by pressures of outdated traditions.
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I took back my birth name after first divorce as it cost a fortune in court so I just added it with the divorce papers. I was an RN with maiden name and to change license would have been a pain. We are individuals and deserve to be treated that way. My kids would always have a different last name anyway and they thought nothing of me using my maiden name. You are a good man and she is a lucky wife. Love this article.
Laws only matter if they’re enforced. It would be solidarity with the people if administrators/gatekeepers/enforcers would ignore unethical/repressive laws. Our fascist government is making repressive laws to criminalize, dehumanize, marginalize people - and disenfranchise folk. Civil rights lawyers and advocates are trying to tie these up in court, but meanwhile the fascist government is terrorizing and criminalizing its people. States need to pushback hard and collectively.