Anyone with experience of husband / couple name change?

[SocksOff]

Looking for advice with women with experience of married name change as a heterosexual couple, as having searched online it is a minefield of confusion!

DP and I are going to combine our two surnames e.g. Jones and Smith. The options are to hyphenate to Jones-Smith but our preferred option is two names as in Jones Smith.

We both prefer this option as we think it will be easier to drop one of the names for our day-to-day lives. e.g. he remains Tom Smith and I remain Katie Jones - at work, with friends, casually on Facebook etc. I am an academic and he has established career so we both want to generally be known by our current names, but legally, on paper / passports we would like to have the same name as each other as it matters to us, (also for DC).

Therefore, if we do choose to lose the hyphen, what is the best / easiest option for us, and what are our legal options?

1. Before marriage DP changes his name by deed poll to add Jones as a middle name e.g. Tom David Jones SMITH. After marriage I add Smith to my surname...
2. Before marriage DP changes his surname by deed poll e.g. Tom David JONES SMITH. After marriage I simply take on my husband's name in the traditional way using birth certificate.
3. Other ideas?...

We are same sex couple who chose completely new surname and we just signed our deed poll for new name straight after wedding certificate. This was because we didn't want our new name until we were married.
If you are having a non church service you could ask your registrar for advice.
You can change your name for free by deed poll.
The only company that didnt accept my free deed poll was the coventry building society who paid towards me getting one done by the uk deed poll service as a goodwill gesture as i didn't see why i should pay when its not a legal requirement to use the service.
Good luck with decision and wedding.

There’s a lot of companies online telling you that you need a deed poll for the man to change his name. Most of these companies make money by organising the deed poll.

Legally, whatever name you sign the marriage certificate in will be your new name, for men or women. Some more old fashioned banks / utility companies can’t cope with this and will want to see a copy of the non-existent deed poll, but it won’t be a problem for getting a new passport or driving license.

We’re in Scotland so just got a lawyer to do a statutory declaration (I think that’s what it’s called) to state new names.

Inchoccyheaven and MrsFionaCharming thanks for this advice. Ideally we would love to mesh like you did inchoccy but there's no decent option with our names. I was under the impression that the sexist legislation (in England at least) means the man has to use deed poll to change his name whereas woman can just adopt husband's name using marriage certificate?

So confused!!

I hope this is the right screenshot!

OP, I am doing the same thing.

The situation is a bit different for me because I live in France where my maiden name will always remain my legal name and you cannot change your legal name.

But when I phoned the passport office to see whether I could get a new passport with both names, non hyphenated (just as you describe), they said yes. I just need a copy of the marriage certificate showing my name and my husband’s name. (It has to be translated, unfortunately.)

Once you’ve got your passport changed, that’s your official ID so you should be able to change your name on anything else you want.

There is apparently also an option to keep your passport in your maiden name but have an official observation to say that you also use your married name.

So it would say, “Katie Jones, also known as Katie Smith”, if you prefer that option.

Your husband would need to do a deed poll to do the same thing though. He should ask the passport office what they will accept as a valid deed poll.

This is confusing to me- we considered it but in the end both kept our names, but we've friends who both changed and as far as I'm aware they just both did it on the basis of their wedding certificate- started using the double-barrelled name, showed the bank the wedding certificate, just told everyone else that was what they were doing.

As far as I'm aware they didn't do a deed poll though it's possible I misunderstood that part.

Socks we didnt mesh names as we both had ex husband names so we chose a completely new name and changed it by deed poll on our wedding day.
Speak to registrar and they should be able to give you best advice.