The _________ Family
As a lesbian living in a state that has banned same-sex marriages having one family last name has always been very important to me. It seemed like a way to recognize a same-sex family unit, when marriage was not an option. I am sure you could imagine how thrilled I was last spring when Violet told me that she wanted to take my last name. unfortunately that it about as far as we had gotten with changing her last name, until recently. I downloaded the Petition to Name Change for Violet to fill out, but was unsure what to put in the blank titled “reason for name change”. I am not sure how Violet should word what her reasoning is for a name change. Can you give me suggestions on what you all wrote in that blank? I am so afraid that in our backwards state the judge will deny the request.
Mommies In The Making 
You can simply write ‘dislike current name’ and that should be enough.
I don’t know what state you’re in, but Strawberry is right. When I changed my last name to my wife’s (we’re also in a state that bans marriage), I put “to better reflect my family” or something along those lines. The judge didn’t even question it.
I have this same problem! Our approach was to hyphenate the baby’s last name and to keep our own. We may all change to her hyphenated name in the future though so I’m eager to see your responses.
I changed mine last month for pretty much the same reason–wanting to be the _____ family. No one could ever spell my last name, so hyphenating would have just made a bad situation worse. They didn’t ask on the forms in my state for a reason, and when I showed up the judge didn’t ask for one (she did see my lovely wife sitting with me in the otherwise empty room, so we all knew what was going on, but she didn’t say anything). Now it’s just been a little strange changing everything else because people assume I married a man and seem confused when I hand over a court order instead of a marriage certificate. But it’s been fun to be “the ___s” and already I’ve perfected my new signature! Good luck! I think Strawberry’s suggestion should work fine!
I changed my last name last year to my partner’s. I just wrote “I would like to use for personal and professional use”. No other explanation given. But we live in Queens, NYC, and it’s probably easier to get names changed. Good luck!
First of all- so happy I found your blog! I can’t read much of it right this second because I’m at work but I’ll make sure to read more later.
What state are you speaking of?
I live in CA and recently got into a partnership with… well, my partner (I do refer to her as wife). Luckily for us, since 2005, one can take a partners name when registering so I have recently taken her name. I didn’t realize how much of a privilege this is- specially since I’m still trying to find time to get my SSN changed (and DL, and student records, and so on and on).
Congrats! I said I wanted to change it to share the same last name as my life partner and son
Aw, that’s exciting! I would go with Strawberry’s suggestion, too. How can a judge argue with “dislike current name”?