HOW TO GET YOUR NAME CHANGED LEGALLY WITH THE HELP OF A LAWYER

In someone’s life there could be a few reasons why someone might need to change his/her name It could be due to marriage or could even be because of a divorce or because of adoption or other major life event. To make it valid, it should be done legally by consulting a civil lawyer or family law litigant. The process should be done in the court through petition.

The process for name changing can differ from state to state, but in most of the states to change your name legally you’d have to ask authorization from the ordinary courts and acquire a request from a judge. This court order allows the authorities to change your name in governmental official papers and certificates like birth certificate, driving license, and passport and so on. In some states, for changing the name a police verification is required before and after the process, because there are some people who are restricted to change their name like, rapists, murderers, terrorists or any other person on whom a civil or criminal case is ongoing.

Overview

To get your name change legitimately, you have to file a petition for name-changing in the subordinate or district court. Most of the name changing cases are heard and decided only in one hearing and the court gives an order to change the name.

There are a few prerequisites you should know at the time of filing petition for name changing. They are as follows:

• Residence: As per the state or central legislature of each respective state before you file for name changing petition, it is required you must be living in that state from the past six to twelve months. This may differ as per state laws and amendments.
• Age and sound mind: For filing petition you should be above 18 years old and be of sound mind.
• Fee and paperwork:  For filing a petition you have to do lots of paperwork like providing identification proofs and paying court fee to the clerks. Click on the link for more information.

Name Changing Process

The process of name changing is divided into seven steps:

Step 1: For name changing with the help of a lawyer, you have to file a petition in the subordinate court of the respective state and have a xerox copy of that.

Step 2: At the time of filing petition you have to enlist the reason for changing the name. It may require a police verification to prove you don’t have any ongoing criminal or civil case.

Step 3: Sign the petition you just filed and attach the required documents along with no legal obligation certificate and police verification report because of the above-mentioned reason and have it notarized on legal papers.

Step 4: Now deposit the court fee for filing petition.

Step 5: Attend the hearings of your name changing case and answer honestly to those questions which will be asked by the judge in the proceedings. Once the judge is satisfied with the reason of name changing, he will approve the petition, then you will receive a copy of the judgement in a couple of days.

After this you can use the certified copy of the judgement or court’s order to change your name in the official documents and other papers, this step of changing your name the official documents and the other documents should be done independently.

Sometimes there are some obstacles came in the way of changing name like the other party is refusing that you cannot change your name or sometimes the judge refused to approve the petition because of not getting any satisfactory reason for name changing.

1. The case of other party when it refuses:

In this stage the notice will be provided to the other party and the judge will direct to get an affidavit go consent of name changing, if the other party will refuse to give than the ordinary court proceedings will start. The judge will now decide on the basis of proceedings and hearings that the reason to stop for changing the name is valid or not. If the judge comes to end that the other party’s reason is lame than the judge can pass an order to change the name.

1. The case of personal reasons:

In some cases where the judge refuse to approve the petition just because of reason that you are hiding yourself by changing name from any legal obligation or to infringe anyone’s rights to avoid any regulation.

By hiring any legal official which means any lawyer to change your name by the court process, it will be beneficiary because he knew every bit of the legal proceedings and process and can explain you in better way as compare to others.