purpose of name change?

[gunit123]

what is the point of women changing their maiden names after marriage?

i see lot of people struggling about how to answer question about maiden names etc uscis asks. after all its 21 century and its not like your kids don't get whatever last name you want to give... why should wife change her name too?

my wife never changed her name. i didn't even ask her to and uscis never asked why she didn't ... i think it will be lot easier on ourselves if we abandon this whole change wife's name after marriage thing.

just my opinion to make life easier for us when filing for green card and after that i751, n400


its not like some people stay married to same person.. why doing this moot thing over and over?


let me know your thoughts...

[quirkywombat]

what is the point of women changing their maiden names after marriage?

i see lot of people struggling about how to answer question about maiden names etc uscis asks. after all its 21 century and its not like your kids don't get whatever last name you want to give... why should wife change her name too?

my wife never changed her name and uscis never asked why she didn't ... i think it will be lot easier on ourselves if we abandon this whole change wife's name after marriage thing.

just my opinion to make life easier for us when filing for green card and after that i751, n400


let me know your thoughts...

A long time ago it used to be mandatory for women to change their last name. I know people who wanted to change last names because they wanted their family to all ultimately have the same surname, or some people didn't like their maiden name...some people don't for work purposes, etc. It's ultimately personal preference and I think officers are much more understanding nowadays than in the past

[Enub4]

There are countries that married women do not change the name. There are countries that it was just a custom to use it but not a legal change and now the government changed the rules and they need to use the "birth" name on all official documents, so now they don't change names.

Some countries have 2 last names, the first is the father's and the second is the mother's, but some are changing that and the parents must choose the order when they have the first kid and the second kid will have the order already chosen. Anyway, they can change the order if they want when they reach 18 years old.

I know a woman who used the married name on her home country, enter the USA with matching visa and passport. Then when she renewed her passport she had to use the maiden name. Now the passport have another entry that say "spouse last name". Now she needs to change all documents in the USA. I think she asked for an extension on her visa and now the extension has the same last names as her new passport. It is not fun.

Some people told me that now you get SSN, DL even GC with 2 last names if your home country documents show that. Even if you only have 1 word per last name that cause problems on some systems that don't like "special characters" like a blank space or a dash.