To change my name

[blahblahlandgoogoodoll]

A recent thread (and loads of people going away on holiday) has made me think about the practicalities of travelling with my two young children.

They are age 3 and 9 months. My DP are not married and don't intend to get married. Not important to either of us etc. My kids have his name ( we couldn't double barrel because I'm already double barrelled ) so that was just the easier choice.

There's so much talk of if we travel without DP needing to take their birth certificates / letters of permission etc etc. would it just be easier to change my name via deed poll to the same as theirs and skip the marriage. I presume nobody would then know if we were married or not but would presume so.

Is that OTT. It would seem that would just make life easier.

What are peoples thoughts/ experiences?

Dear god.

I am married, and didn’t take husbands name. I’ve travelled loads with the kids and it has been fine. Not worth changing your name on that front if you otherwise don’t want to.

Might be worth being actually married though- e.g you are next of kin for your partner when you travel. Plus a bunch of stuff that is actually very relevant day to day for most women with kids….just saying.

Just travel with their birth certificates. Far simpler! There's no need to change your name unless you want to.

No need.

I can’t imagine it would be any sort of hassle to travel when you don’t share the same name as your children. Not many people travel abroad with children and without their partner if they are together and if you do, just take a letter.

That said, I do like having the same names as my children and I couldn’t have gotten rid of my previous name fast enough (I’m NC with my family and only my dad had my surname and he is long dead). So I’m very happy I changed my name but that is purely for identity reasons. I wanted to be known by a different name. I wouldn’t change it just due to travel unless you want to do it for bigger reasons.

It's not the name that's the issue for travel. It's whether everyone with parental responsibility has given permission for the children to be taken abroad by 1 person. This would apply to married or unmarried couples who are on a child's birth certificate.

I did this. Have 2 kids with long term partner and not really fussed about getting married. Had a couple of travel incidents when I didn’t take birth certificate and I was grilled about my relationship with my son. On one occasion the airline said I had to get my partner to send an email ‘giving permission’ for me to travel with my son. That was annoying. To be honest it wasn’t the main reason I changed my name but it was a factor. The main reason is I wanted the same surname as my kids. Simple. It helped that I didn’t feel much of an emotional attachment to my own surname as it’s a bit crap lol whereas my partner has a nice one!! Changing by deed poll was scarily quick and easy. I am glad I did it.

You still need to have the documents. I've got the same name as my children and I've been asked lots of times when traveling without dh, especially long haul. It's got nothing to do with having the same name as them.

If you are aware, you notice passport control asking questions that you probably wouldn't even think about under other circumstances. Casual questions directly to the child often.