Advice on my wife changing her surname - how best to do it?

Emanef

Hi all

We got married abroad (in Mauritius) around three and a half years ago. Because we were living abroad it was easier to not bother changing my wife's surname to mine so she kept using her own.

We moved back to the UK last year and she's now pregnant, and we'd like to change her surname before the baby arrives, but given that our marriage certificate is a Mauritian one we're not sure of the best way to do it.

From searching online it like the two options for changing it are;

1: send our marriage certificate off along with a covering letter to each department, company, etc that needs to be notified.

2: get her name changed by deed poll.

Although option 1 seems like it would usually be the easier one, given that if anyone loses our Mauritian marriage certificate it will be a real pain to get a replacement, and having to send it to various places one by one will take some time, we're wondering if her changing her name by deed poll might be easier in our case?

What do you think? I'm presuming she needs to just download the deed poll forms and send them off? Does the process take long?

I'm assuming we need to inform our banks, DVLA, passport office, tax office, utilities, doctor & hospital, etc, so I presume most people create a big long tick list and slowly work through?!

Any advice or thoughts?

Many thanks!

Voyager2002

The simple solution: get a number of certified copies of the marriage certificate and then proceed with plan 1.

Note that in order to change her name on her (British) passport you would need to get her a new one and pay the fee again: you might prefer to continue using the existing one, and make all airline bookings in her maiden name, until it expires.

trailingspouse

Your wife can just start calling herself by her married name. As with anyone changing their name after marriage, places that already have a record of your wife with her previous name will need some sort of evidence. I've always just sent a copy of the marriage cert - I don't remember any organisation sending it back and insisting on the original. You can get someone (usually a professional person such as a solicitor, doctor or suchlike) to sign the copy to say that it is a true copy of the original - that way you don't have to worry about the original being lost.

And yes - a tick list is the way to go. Don't worry about the fact that you were married 3 years ago - I'd worked my way through the tick list and then received a letter from an organisation I'd missed, addressed to my old name, 5 years later!!

pmlindyloo

As you have found out you do not need a deed poll when you are taking your husband's surname.

Not all places need a copy of the original document but if they do just get a certified copy.

See here:

https://deedpolloffice.com/advice/woman-getting-married#take-partners-name

trailingspouse

Re the passport - when I re-married, I had two years left on my old passport. Although I had to pay the full fee for the new passport, they issued one that included the two years remaining from my old passport (ie, I got a 12 year passport). I don't know how far they would be prepared to go on this, but might be worth asking the question.

Emanef

Thank you very much for the quick replies!

How would we get a certified copy of a Mauritian marriage certificate? Do we have to take our original somewhere to get it authenticated or something?

[Deleted User]

I'm recently married and gradually changing my name over, starting with the banks where I didn't have to post my marriage certificate. When I got pregnant I wanted to have my married name on everything to do with the baby (on scans etc), so I just gave it on the forms when I signed up with maternity services - it didn't seem to matter that I haven't yet updated my GP.

When the baby comes, you only need 1 form of ID, and it seems the marriage certificate will do:
https://www.gov.uk/register-birth/overview

maman

Your wife can call herself whatever she wants. All that really matters is that she's not doing it to defraud anyone. So I'd start from informing the bank and work from there.

Slinky

trailingspouse wrote: »

Re the passport - when I re-married, I had two years left on my old passport. Although I had to pay the full fee for the new passport, they issued one that included the two years remaining from my old passport (ie, I got a 12 year passport). I don't know how far they would be prepared to go on this, but might be worth asking the question.

https://www.gov.uk/changing-passport-information

Up to 9 months of unexpired time on your old passport will be added to your new passport.

Flugelhorn

Appreciate this is an overseas marriage cert so my comments don't apply here but when we needed copies of birth / marriage certs for claiming pensions / ID etc. I bought some more copies from GRO at £10 each I think. They are as valid as the "originals" which live in the filing cabinet but it is OK to send them places.

LKRDN_Morgan

I got married abroad 2 years ago and only just got round to changing my name. All I did was have the marriage certificate translated and certified. Cost £45. If you go through the embassy it's way more expensive. So far I've updated my bank and passport. Problem is they all need to see the original so things can only be updated 1 at a time. It's a pain because even recorded delivery I worry it's going to get lost in the post! So far so good though. I've had no problems.