My 12 yr wants to change her surname. Current situation with her father is not stable and I don't think this will go well. Does anyone have any experience with just using a different surname for their change rather than legally changing it? Is that possible? If so, where do I start?
EDIT: This in no way has been encouraged by me. She is a mature 12yr old and is very aware of her father's 'failings'. I'm simply 'looking into it' as I told her I would.
7 Replies
It sounds more like she wants to do it out of spite to hurt him which is not healthy. Have you tried counselling?
Please don't use a different last name than what is on her birth certificate. My mum did this and it was like I never existed, as all my schooling etc was in a different name than my BC. I actually had to change my name by deed poll to what was on my BC to actually exist. It makes life so much harder.
Don’t give her the option she is 12. Rather just if she uses it at school then that’s up to her and you can let the school know it’s what she wants to go but.
I changed my name but not legally when I was 10. So did my brother.
It was all fine except we went to get our licenses & every form of I.d was in our preferred name except our birth certificates. It delayed us getting our licenses by almost a year. We ended up fighting our bio father in court for permission as that is what we wanted to do.
My son is now 10 & wants to drop his father's part of his last name.
I have informed the school & anything not "legal" is just in my surname (his actual last name is hyphenated) I have spoken to him & explained what it means if he does change it on everything except his birth certificate & he has said he is happy to have "clark" on anything his mates can see & he will change the rest for his 18th birthday present.
A 12 yo who wants to change her last name with not a single bit of input from you? No? You have 100 percent encouraged this.
Anyway, you can ask the school to use a different surname but it will still appear legally on school reports etc . When she's 18 she can change it herself
Not OP. I still have my ex husbands last name because our child still has his last name, my child (10 years old) who hates his father for not being around and just in general an absent parent wants to change his last name to my maiden name even though i don’t use my maiden name.
I have in no way encouraged this, but he is relentless, he just doesn’t want the association with his father.
Wow. Thanks.