So I'm sitting at the DMV currently because the wife and I (I am a woman too...most of you know this) are wanting to change our last name on our DL. We got married back in March, but finally have the time to get around to it. Our decision was to hyphenate our last names in the order of hers first. So pretend hers is Smith and mine is Jones. We've been excited this whole time to be Smith-Jones.
Fast forward to us getting here and I get my number called first. I go to my counter and am promptly told that they can't do that. They can only make my name Jones-Smith and hers Smith-Jones. That completely defeats the purpose because we wouldn't have the same name. He says it has to be maiden name first. I tell him that as a gay couple, who has the maiden name??? He argues that I now must go to get a formal name change in court, which for those who know, costs a few hundred bucks and even more time.
Gay jokes and snarky comments aside, is there anyone that can help? Is this not a little bit discriminatory? We are not able to choose the order of our names to create our married name? It's not as though we are making up something. We just want to hyphenate. Any help or legal advice would be much appreciated. It's very upsetting because we've been looking forward to this final step and we get to walk out empty-handed and feeling like we aren't being heard.
Fast forward to us getting here and I get my number called first. I go to my counter and am promptly told that they can't do that. They can only make my name Jones-Smith and hers Smith-Jones. That completely defeats the purpose because we wouldn't have the same name. He says it has to be maiden name first. I tell him that as a gay couple, who has the maiden name??? He argues that I now must go to get a formal name change in court, which for those who know, costs a few hundred bucks and even more time.
Gay jokes and snarky comments aside, is there anyone that can help? Is this not a little bit discriminatory? We are not able to choose the order of our names to create our married name? It's not as though we are making up something. We just want to hyphenate. Any help or legal advice would be much appreciated. It's very upsetting because we've been looking forward to this final step and we get to walk out empty-handed and feeling like we aren't being heard.