Adjustment of Status - married names question.

[ativey 0]

Hi all,

My wife and I are working through the adjustment of status forms, and have something of a problem. My wife is the U.S citizen, and I am immigrating from the U.K. All of the forms involved (I-485, I-765, I-864, G-325a) ask for my "spouses name". Now, it doesn't specify if this is her married name (so my family name), or her family name. We are in Massachusetts, where the marriage certificate does not appear to function as a change of name in itself, and we will need to formally arrange for her name to be changed. My K-1 expires December 6th, 2016, and our wedding took place on October 1st, 2016. From then until a couple of days ago we have been waiting for the marriage certificate to become available.

My concern is which name do we put onto all of these forms? Technically, her current name has not changed since we married, and won't until we formally arrange for it to do so. This name change process could take apparently 6-8 weeks as well.

I did look at the example forms here on VisaJourney, which have previously been an enormous help, however all the AOS forms are written with the visa holder being a woman who has changed her name as a result of the wedding, and I did not want to guesstimate from this.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

tl;dr:

Do we use U.S citizen's maiden name on AOS forms?!

[Kastrs 723]

Your K1 was used the minute you entered the US

Your wife should use whatever name she intends to take, if that is her married name list that on the form

[LionessDeon 2,060]

My marriage certificate does not specifically have the words "My name is hereby legally changed to......." It shows my previous name and his name. I have not had one problem with anyone...bank, social security office, pension office, health insurance, etc etc. with changing my name to his. They see we are now married. They see his surname. Its a given, so to speak, that I am changing to my husbands surname. Put her new married name on the forms. You're sending in the marriage certificate. They get it.

Once you receive your marriage certificate she can begin changing her name on accounts. I had no problem. No one has asked me for a legal name change document from the courts. The married certificate is the document.

Edited October 20, 2016 by LionessDeon

[ativey 0]

Hi guys, thank you for the very quick replies!

I ought to have mentioned in the original post that my wife does plan to switch her first and middle names as well, at the same time as taking my family name. This is a name change that would need to go through the courts. From what I can gather this gives us two options:

1. Leave name as is (her family name), complete AOS, then change her family name as well as switching first/middle names.

or

2. Have her take my family name, complete AOS, then switch her first/middle names.

I'll edit the original post to add this in for anyone else that has a look here.

Thank you again!

EDIT:

Whoops, looks like you can't edit original posts. My bad.

Edited October 20, 2016 by ativey

[LionessDeon 2,060]

Well then yea that's totally different. You can use her new last name on the forms. But if you're planning on putting her new first name on the forms too, you should definitely wait until you have legal name change documents.