How to deal with my bank re. title?

[NotADudeExactly]

So my bank has always treated me as a "Mrs" - not the title I normally use, but also not a huge annoyance. Until, that is, I tried to change it to "Ms" today as I happened to visit a branch for a change.

First thing, the guy at the counter tells me I need to speak to a personal banker. Fair enough - although it would be nice for them to be able to make minor changes. Except that when I did this, I was told by their personal banker that, ...

• I am a Mrs because I have a joint account with DH listed as "spouse"

• They will only change my title if I provide "official ID" such as a passport to prove that I'm a "Ms"

• Yes, the bank recognizes that passports and other forms of ID indeed do not contain titles, but they need one as proof anyway

• They're happy for me to be a "Dr" or "Prof", though, if I get a university to confirm that I qualify.

What made me even more angry is that I ended up having this conversation not in private but in the lobby of the branch with personal banker and branch manager trying to convince me that I should be a Mrs. All the while, a queue starts to form behind me and men are shaking their heads. I realize completely that my judgment at that point may have been clouded by anger - but I would have preferred not to discuss this in front of everyone and basically serve as the demonstration model unreasonable, hysterical female.

Long story short: being a Mrs wasn't such a big deal - being told that I cannot decide I'd rather be a Ms and being patronized kind of is.

Where do I go from here? Worth making a fuss about or should I just switch banks?

My mother says that when she married in the 60s she didn't realise that keeping her own name was a legal option.

When my mother got married in 1981 this was not actually an option. You had to be Mrs Husbandsname. Of course my parents got married in Switzerland, which only included equal rights for women in the constitution that samr year - and where women had only had the vote nationally for a decade at the time and were still fighting for it in some states.

I clearly remember when mum got her own name back after the law was changed. And how my nursery teacher started out as a "Miss" and suddenly turned into a "Mrs/Ms" (same word in German).

Regarding the OP, what I suppose I should have mentioned is: I am and always have been Ms Myname - Mrs Myname as far as Barclays are concerned. This makes it all the more puzzling: having different names is okay but not being a Mrs is not? (Of course as a dual national I have the benefit of having not one but two passports and an ID card that prove the Myname part.)

Dude - in this country, it's actually always been an option, just not a well-known one. :)

I worked for a large American hotel change who in their training used Barclays as a text book case of how not to give customer service

I put my dads name on my account the black horse (so he could access without problems if i was incapacitated) and they put his name on the account first - he has been in and complain strongly but they keep putting my name second again on cheque books, his second name begins with F and mine E so they can't give any other reason than the man's name comes first and the female second even if the account was the females first for 20 years

a person's name and title aren't even the same thing.

your name is your name. the ms part (or whatever) is just how you prefer to be addressed in formal situations. you can't have 'proof' of it any more than you can 'prove' that you prefer someone saying hello or hi when they meat you.

personally, i just prefer my name.

i was livid when barclays issued shares on accounts. because shares cannot be jointly owned, they only issued them to the first named person on joint accounts - which meant the men, of course. how many joint accounts did they give out shares to? (back in the 90s), many thousands. for every one of them the men benefitted and the women were left out!

in the US we order out own cheque books online. I got to fill out the form, so I got to choose how our names appear. Me first!

I think we need to challenge the use of titles for women in general. It really doesn't do anything for equality that women (still!) have to specify whether they are 'available' or not.

Please sign Jeanne's petition to put an end to this blatant form of sexism: epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/18225

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alittlefeministblogonlanguage.blogspot.com/2011/10/you-just-come-here-missy.html

its illegal to put Ms instead of Mrs if you have registered your marrage to my understanding, one of my best friends bernadette was taken to court and fined £280 for lying to the bank we have no choice sadly :(

No, it isn't.
that's the bullshit the crappy banks want you to believe - believe me, your title is totally interchangeable at any time

your best friend was taken for a ride.
you can use whatever title you want, as long as it's not one that has to be earned.

hello nickelbabe,

unfortunately you are wrong, iv spent i while researching and on the banks website it says that it is a criminal offence to provide false information when you appley for an account, its just the law nickelbabe [hsmile]

It is not false information to call yourself Ms if you're married SheRole4Justice

um...so who exactly can call herself Ms in your opinion, sherole?

Well I did think that it wasnt false infomation becuase how can it matter if im married or not to them, so what i did was go down to my local branch and tell the bank manager that i thort it was not correct to ask me but he said to stop being a "over zelus bra burner" and if i didnt like it to pay back my overdraft and leave the bank at this point i thought that it really was worth argueng and thats when bernadette was taken away and fined by the bank

well i thort that Ms is for if you are not married but old enough to be married, well thats what my husband told me

Then your husband is misinformed, sherole.

It sounds like you've given a lot of wrong information by a lot of people sherole
:(

It sounds like you were dealing with a dreadful chauvinistic bank manager, too.
He's the one that's in the wrong.
It could be that your friend had other information that she provided that was wrong, but title would not be one of them.

Mr, Master, Miss, Mrs and Ms are all what we call arbitrary titles - anyone can use any of them at any stage of their life (although you would probably be called up for calling yourself Mr if you're a woman! )
So, I use Ms all the time, as that's my preference, and I have done since I was 18. I used Miss before that. I could use Mrs if I want to (and if I want to, I can use it with my own surname, or with DH's surname - it doesn't have to just be with DH's surname) I can use Miss again if I want to.
I can use any of these titles with my own name or with DH's surname.
That's the beauty of it - I can use any name or title I want - the name part needs a paper trail to prove that you habitually use that name as your name, but the title doesn't matter.
I can use whatever title I want, at any time I choose.
I choose Ms MyName because that's who I am , I wouldn't use Mrs DHName even though I'm married to him, because Mrs DHName is DH's mum, not me.

Natwest changed me from Miss to Ms with no problems and no evidence needed. I am unmarried at the moment but same principle really. I decided that at 32 and 3 kids I wanted a more grown up title!

I'm back - and while I was on holiday, Barclays not only changed my title and sent me a new card but also properly apologized (although it clearly took them a while).

:o

As I suspected in the first place, the staff at my branch were basically arriving at their conclusions via colonic autoextraction methodology. I kind of feel like walking back in there just to spite the people in question (but I'm more mature than that).

Thanks for your support!

Brilliant NADE. Very glad it was not a policy thing, did the response mention that they would be advising the branch staff? If not you could be immature helpful and let them know with a well-deserved, smug self-righteousness clear conscience. :)

I remained a "Miss" when I got married and did not change my name. Back in 1984 people seemed to struggle with "Ms" so it wasn't worth the effort. I've never had any trouble with the bank about it, though once when we applied for a mortgage and went through the application saying we were married the bank clerk got into a terrible muddle with the papers as he had assumed we were each married to someone else.

Was reminded of this thread earlier. I changed bank today to the Coop. On my joint account, the guy processing it asked me whose name would go first. So we are Ms and Mr Wild. I didn't even mention it, he asked.

I am first on our joint account because I was standing further forwards and did the asking when we went into the bank to do it. I did the talking so they put me first because it made sense to ask me (the talking person) for my name and write that down in the "person 1" box.

arriving at their conclusions via colonic autoextraction methodology :o

Ha, see! So it's not "just the system, man's name automatically first, no you can't change that!" like they have been trying to tell us.