For MA name changes, the Probate and Family court page can be found here:
http://www.mass.gov/courts/courtsandjudges/courts/probateandfamilycourt/index.html
The forms for legal change of name, which vary by court, can be found here:
http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/formsm-z.html#name
The laws regarding change of name can be found here:
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/gl-210-toc.htm
And consist of Chapter 210, section 12 - 13, reading as follows:
CHANGE OF NAMES
Chapter 210: Section 12 Petitions
Section 12. A petition for the change of name of a person may be heard by
the probate court in the county where the petitioner resides. The change of
name of a person shall be granted unless such change is inconsistent with
public interests.
Chapter 210: Section 13 Notice and certificate; decree; entry; conditions
precedent
Section 13. The court shall, before decreeing a change of name, request a
report from the commissioner of probation on the person filing the petition
and, except for good cause shown, require public notice of the petition to
be given and any person may be heard thereon, and, upon entry of a decree,
the name as established thereby shall be the legal name of the petitioner,
and the register may issue a certificate, under the seal of the court, of
the name as so established.
No decree shall be entered, however, until there has been filed in the court
a copy of the birth record of the person whose name is sought to be changed
and, in case such person's name has previously been changed by decree of court
or at marriage pursuant to section one D of chapter forty-six, either a copy
of the record of his birth amended to conform to the previous decree changing
his name, a copy of such decree, or a copy of the record of marriage; provided,
that the filing of any such copy may be dispensed with if the judge is satisfied
that it cannot be obtained.
The laws regarding legal change of sex can be found here:
http://www.state.ma.us/legis/laws/mgl/46%2D13.htm
In Chapter 46, section 13, subsection e, and read as follows:
(e) If a person has completed sex reassignment surgery, so-called, and has
had his name legally changed by a court of competent jurisdiction, the birth
record of said person shall be amended to reflect the newly acquired sex and
name, provided that an affidavit is received by the town clerk, executed by
the person to whom the record relates, and accompanied by a physician's notarized
statement that the person named on the birth record has completed sex reassignment
surgery, so-called, and is not of the sex recorded on said record. Said affidavit
shall also be accompanied by a certified copy of the legal change of name
aforementioned above.
INTRODUCTION:
When I changed my name in 2001, I was a resident of Middlesex County, Massachusetts,
which encompasses the greater Boston area. I have detailed the process here
from my personal perspective on what it was like to go through this process.
Please note that I only changed my name and not my gender because of the timing
involved. It would not have been appropriate to do both at the same time in
my situation. Your situation may differ; this is not legal advice; don't run
with scissors; contents may settle during shipment; etc. etc.
BACKGROUND:
My case was different in that I did not change my gender at that time, just
my name. I was planning to wait for the name change until I transitioned at
a later date, and "just live" with the old name. However, when my
parents disowned me after my disclosure to them, I found that I could not
even look at the old name any more, or sign it, or anything. My ex was signing
it for me, or signing her name instead. Something obviously had to be done.
So, I "engineered" a new name that would work both before, during
and after transition. This was the main objective. I did not want to have
to do this again.
The first name was an androgynous derivative of my future chosen female name.
According to my Yahoo! names research, this name could represent either gender.
It also just so happened that I loved the new name, but I tried real hard
not to let this bias my choice too much. It was somewhat uncommon, but it
was not exotic. My opinion is that you might want to stay away from exotic
ones unless it *really* works for you. Me, I would have stood out like a bad
Hawaiian muu-muu with a name like Candy.
The middle name came from one of my daughters. It was an easy pick for me.
There was some concern about how this would work in boy mode, but the "first
name-middle name" combination was not an unlikely pairing, just a little
bit unusual at first glance. I did wonder, though, how this would affect things.
Since that time, I have been pleasantly surprised (see below).
The last name was derived from my extended family's lineage. I chose it to
honor those who supported me in my transition. I had to change it, though,
from what I originally intended it to be. It seems that my original choice
was based on a misjudgment of certain family members. My final choice worked
out better. Since I did not plan on having any more children, there was no
chance of my choice working havoc on someone's future genealogical endeavors.
I would appear as a "singularity", for those of you with a mathematical
background.
Finally, the names in combination passed all of Andrea's "sanity tests"
listed under "Choosing Your New Name" elsewhere on this site. Meaning,
it didn't look or sound strange in any of the possible combinations (first-last,
last-first, monograms, etc). After all, like I said, the goal was not to make
a statement, but rather to fit in long-term.
THE NAME CHANGE PROCESS:
The actual name change process was fairly simple. I filled out the application
myself, and went to the Probate and Family Court Department of the Trial Court
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in Cambridge. For locals, it is literally
within shouting distance west of the Lechmere T stop on the Green line, on
Cambridge street. Once in the courthouse, I went to the Administrative Office
of the Probate and Family Court on the second floor. I gave my forms to the
records administrator there, and we went across the hall to a huge open room.
After a brief delay, the judge came out and we went over to a desk and sat
down. She asked me a few questions relating to why I was changing my name.
I told her why, as I detailed above. I did not mention anything about my transition,
because this was not relevant at that time, and would have only confused the
issue. She did kind of raise her eyebrow at my choice of a feminine middle
name, with me looking male, but I told her that it was my daughter's middle
name and I really liked it. Oh, OK, she said. She did express some regrets
about my parental situation, saying "that's a shame." Then, with
the preliminaries out of the way, she told me to raise my right hand and take
an oath to the effect that I was not doing this to avoid anything like the
law or creditors. Then, she finally signed the order, upon which a BIG wave
of relief came over me. After that, I floated down the hall to the Records
department, and obtained 4 certified copies. Trust me, each and every copy
has been needed! I did not request a sealing of the file, which may or may
not have been necessary at the time. Maybe I should have, come to think of
it, but things were complicated enough in my life at that time. And, I did
not need a lawyer or a newspaper advertisement. It literally took all of 15
minutes and four people - me, two clerks, and the judge. Oh yeah, and $44.00
for 4 official copies... :)
After the courthouse visit, I then headed for the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
I showed them the official copy and got my new temporary license with my new
name and new androgynous photo. I was prepared, having gotten through one
full electrolysis "clearing" prior to this point, so the picture
looked somewhat androgynous. The real license showed up in the mail about
a week later. Having gladly surrendered my old drivers license, I set off
to my next destination.
This ws the Social Security administration. This went without event, as I
now had two documents with my new name on them. They wanted to see the official
copy of the name change order as well. Other than the one hour wait and the
walk in the rain, this one went the smoothest. My new Social Security card
showed up in the mail about a week later as well.
Later that day, I sent off for my passport. I included an official copy of
the name change order, along with two recent pictures (androgynous as well).
They promised that they would return the official copy, and they did. The
new passport took about two weeks to arrive. I was ecstatic.
I then went back to work and commenced with the name change process there.
Funny, you'd think that a highly computerized outfit would have your name
in ONE database. Nope, it was in several. I found 7 before I stopped looking
for more places to change it - I figured that I had gotten the main ones,
and the change would propagate out from there. Plus, personally knowing the
database maintainers helped a lot, too :) The hardest part was changing my
computer userids. Since I was a systems administrator you'd think that this
would be easy. Nope...
The biggest hassle turned out to be the birth certificate. The application
process went smoothly, but it took them FOREVER to process it. I did not get
the new certificates until nearly four months later! However, when they arrived
(four copies, again), I felt a great sense of closure.
The remainder - bank statements, shopping clubs, creditors, etc., went real
smoothly. I made several photocopies of the name change order and mailed it
to them and this was good enough for them.
After about a month of planning, a week of "doing", and four months
of waiting, my old name was history.
HAS IT WORKED?
Yes. Even though it was somewhat of a different situation than most of this
audience will experience, to me it was none the less important simply because
I was doing it pre-transition. The overall objective was still the same -
to have a workable name after transition - just the timing was different,
that's all.
The most important outcome is that I am at peace with myself. My name was
chosen by me and me alone. It reflects who I am now, where I have come from,
and where I am going.
Also, I went after the "big fish" first. I changed 100% of my official
records and probably about 80% of the rest, all of them in the order of their
importance. The rest are historical in nature, and will be done sometime here
shortly. I was personally amazed at the power of a name change court order
- and indirectly, by the futility of trying to change your name (not to mention
your gender, I would imagine) without one. My advice is: do it officially.
You'll thank yourself later.
I also learned that if you are going to do this, it is important that you
follow through and change it everywhere tht it matters. This means, everywhere
that people are most likely to look. Of course, for the majority of this audience,
follow-through should not prove to be a problem.
For those of you who may find yourself in a similar situation (which BTW
I am *not* encouraging or advocating that you do things like I did), I have
since become more convinced that I did not want to have to do this a second
time. There are simply too many places that your name exists to have to change
it. Going into this, I kind of suspected that this would be the case, so I
planned accordingly. Plus, it seems that you only get one "freebie"
shot at changing your name. Having to explain two name changes would undoubtedly
require much more explanation (and questions, I am sure) than just doing it
once. I was worried that people would think that this was a drastic measure.
This has not been the case, though. Those that I have told have either not
cared, or have simply nodded in acknowledgement. In fact, a surprising number
have sympathetically said "I understand it perfectly." Hmmm, sounds
like the "American Family Values" crowd needs to do some more research,
eh? :)
The biggest hassle is that I occasionally have to use the name change order
and reveal my old name. The main reason is on job references where they may
research my work history and discover the name change on their own. I have
found that being proactive about this with the HR people completely and totally
makes it a non-issue. Also, I have only had one job-related occasion where
a further explanation was explicitly requested of me. Given the source, though,
this did not concern me - they were suspicious of everybody.
My experiments with my public presentation since that time have proven that
it will work "either way" without a problem. In boy mode, the middle
name sometimes arouses some curiosity. However, very interestingly, most of
these times people will "rationalize out loud" that it actually
makes sense to them why I have a female middle name, rather than try to find
something wrong with it. There's a subtle lesson here about human nature!
Until I go full time I will be maintaining a very androgynous appearance
so that the "switch" when it happens is not too much for the name
to bear. I suspect that this is the case, but we'll have to wait and see if
it is. I plan to have FFS so the outward appearance is going to be fundamentally
different - not by much, to be reasonable, but still different. I considered
that it might be somewhat of a speed bump to transition and not change your
name at all, but not an impassable obstacle. Even then, I can socially use
the feminized version of my first name very easily if I need to, and not have
to change a single document. So that's not a worry there.
All told, though, things are working beautifully thus far. My name matches
my appearance - both now and how I realistically expect to appear after transition,
so it will make things somewhat self-explanatory for the curious. Some people
seem to embellish my first name when they say it - it just sort of sounds
cute, especially when people with foreign accents do it! I love my new name,
and moreover, I love writing it!
Which reminds me: practice signing and saying your name a LOT! I practiced
for hours and hours, and even then I slipped several times early on. All of
those times I was under some kind of stress, or tired, or in situations which
mentally placed me back "in the past". This is good old Pavlovian
conditioning at work here, but fear not - you can change it. Practice signing
and speaking your new name, and if possible, do so while under stress or tired
to both reinforce the new name and "erase" the old one. I can now
wake up out of a sound sleep and answer the phone with my new name without
having to think about it at all.
Things may have changed since I did my name change. You should DEFINITELY
do your own homework on this to make sure you get everything. If in doubt,
I suggest that you get an attorney.
And the most wonderful part? I have my new name, which I can keep indefinitely,
both before and after transition.
Since I view your web site as the single best source for early transitioners,
fully transitioned and the whole spectrum in between, I thought I would like
to relate my experiences with doing a name change in Massachusetts. Every
other woman I have talked relates a different story as to how it's done based
on the county you live. The following is my experience with changing my name
in Hamden county:
Massachusetts - Hamden County Name Change
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I filed my change of name in Hamden County Probate Court in Springfield, MA
on April 30, 2003. In order to do this I needed to fill out a name change
form, provide a copy of my original birth certificate with a seal from the
city stamped on it, and pay the court fee of $80.
Once that was completed, in about 1 week I received a letter from the court
with the exact wording of a legal notice that had to be run in my local newspaper,
and a court date to return with proof that the legal notice was run in the
paper.
The local paper charged me $50 to run a legal notice for one week (the court
requested minimum). After I met the courts minimum requirement for publishing
in the papers, I can return back as soon as I wanted.
I made sure that I saved several copies of the newspapers and still have
them to this day, and brought back the legal notice with the newspaper clipping.
About one week after this, I received back a copy of the original name change
form from the court showing it had been signed by the judge and was stamped
with the court seal. At that time, I purchased 4 extra copies of my name change
form for $10/each.
I was able to use photocopies of my name change, whenever I appeared in person
such as banks, credit card companies, even my car loan. I needed an original
court copy for my mortgage and a few other places.
All in all, my name change itself was quite easy to do. The paperwork trail
afterwards is the time consuming bit and waiting for it to all filter down
into my credit report also takes quite some time. Hope this helps others living
in my area.
