PSA On Changing Your Name

Well, it’s official, my name is now Angela Divine Knox. If you are thinking, “What? I thought that was your name when you were married four years ago?” Well SO DID I. My marriage license did not change my maiden name to my married name. But since we thought it did, I went about the usual protocol and changed my passport, drivers license, social security card, and so much more. The past four years, I’ve been living under the impression of my name being Angela Divine Knox, and when we discovered it wasn’t, it created a mess of annoying problems to deal with.

So to all you future brides and grooms out there….please check your marriage license before signing it!!! Make sure the spelling is correct, but also that it has the correct name. My husband and I thought we had asked the marriage license to read I would be known Angela Divine Knox, but it didn’t. Not only did the marriage license not change my name, but I SIGNED the license with my maiden name… yikes. So again, CHECK that if you are changing your name, your new name is printed.

Since we thought it was changed, I made copies and mailed it in to change everything. Bank accounts, employee ID at the yoga studio, insurance, mortgage, etc, but worse is that I had to do this for my passport, driver’s license, and social security card in person and they gave me new IDs with my new name that technically didn’t exist. All of these places looked at my marriage license and missed it. Either it’s the same thing I did and they just stamped for approval without being diligent.

I changed everything right away, so for four years I’ve been operating under the name Angela Divine Knox. Traveling as a Knox, opening credit cards as a Knox, the list goes on. Finally, I went to change the last piece of information I needed, the title to my car, and the DMV caught it. So with this info now brought to late, I asked them what to do. They said they didn’t know but I needed to call someone.

My sweet mom spent hours calling hot lines to help me figure out what we needed to do. The “easiest” option was a legal name change. I needed to get myself in front of a judge for them to hear my case and advise me on what to do.

Filing for a legal name change was not only time consuming, but expensive! The paper work cost over $300, plus I had to pay for background checks, parking at the downtown courthouse, the documents (each copy is $14), getting copies of all my ID’s, and the list goes on.

It was a very stupid/expensive mistake that cost me tons of $$$ and a lot of time. What a mess. So don’t do what I did. Please make sure you are getting the correct name (spelling counts) on your marriage license, especially if you are going to change it.

Here’s some resourced on how to change your name.

This whole ordeal took about 6 months for me to complete, but it’s finally over. So glad to finally be operating as Angela Divine Knox!

Want to take more of my advice? Here’s another blog I wrote about measuring success.