Real ID and name changes
May. 4th, 2025 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutA really long time ago, Real ID as a law was passed, with enforcement due to start as the perpetrating administration wound up. This is entirely on brand for how American politics work. A big chunk of the perpetrating party was wildly anti-guvment identification, so it was much easier for that party to pass the law and then dump enforcement onto the other party. No one wanted to really enforce it, until this month. And now, we’re finally doing it.
Even longer ago, in 1991, I got married for the first time (big mistake). Marriage certificates in Washington State at the time (and, I believe, at the time of writing this) did not show the legal name after marriage. But you could take that marriage certificate to the DMV and other places and use it as the basis for changing your name at work and on bank accounts and so forth. I did. But I did not bother to notify Social Security. Wow, were they mad. They mailed me all kinds of stuff. I eventually got around to doing that a year or two later, and shortly after that I got divorced. I very promptly notified social security of that name change. I then made absolutely certain I kept a file of that whole sequence and vowed never to change my name again (I haven’t). I got a passport. I got enhanced wtfery. All the things. When I dragged my sister and her family on a Disney cruise, I worked with B. to get my sister through the passport application process, which was similarly complex because she got married, and then divorced (but did not get rid of her married name).
So now there are all these people in news articles, on FB, on reddit talking about how they can’t get Real ID because they are women who got married and their paperwork isn’t good enough to prove the name change. I’m scratching my head, because a lot of this stuff talks about marriages license. No one wants that. We want a certified marriage certificate. But some people say they are being rejected because the documents on offer do not prove a name change at marriage.
And now I’m trying to figure that out. In many stories, the person has a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and literally no state issued photo id, and often no social security card. I am not counting any situation where there is a spelling (sometimes the hyphen) difference between the social security card and the other documents. If you are living your life with a social security card with a spelling difference from your other identity documents, you have a much higher risk tolerance than I do.
Now I’m wondering about how these people got through the I-9 process. Hmmmm.
ETA:
I’m back! I think you could get through with a social security card and a voter registration card, and in Massachusetts if you register on the paper form you can get a voter’s registration card on the basis of your social.
My sympathy for people who refuse to maintain any of the ordinary forms of identity verification is limited. It’s there. It’s just not very enthusiastically there.
Even longer ago, in 1991, I got married for the first time (big mistake). Marriage certificates in Washington State at the time (and, I believe, at the time of writing this) did not show the legal name after marriage. But you could take that marriage certificate to the DMV and other places and use it as the basis for changing your name at work and on bank accounts and so forth. I did. But I did not bother to notify Social Security. Wow, were they mad. They mailed me all kinds of stuff. I eventually got around to doing that a year or two later, and shortly after that I got divorced. I very promptly notified social security of that name change. I then made absolutely certain I kept a file of that whole sequence and vowed never to change my name again (I haven’t). I got a passport. I got enhanced wtfery. All the things. When I dragged my sister and her family on a Disney cruise, I worked with B. to get my sister through the passport application process, which was similarly complex because she got married, and then divorced (but did not get rid of her married name).
So now there are all these people in news articles, on FB, on reddit talking about how they can’t get Real ID because they are women who got married and their paperwork isn’t good enough to prove the name change. I’m scratching my head, because a lot of this stuff talks about marriages license. No one wants that. We want a certified marriage certificate. But some people say they are being rejected because the documents on offer do not prove a name change at marriage.
And now I’m trying to figure that out. In many stories, the person has a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and literally no state issued photo id, and often no social security card. I am not counting any situation where there is a spelling (sometimes the hyphen) difference between the social security card and the other documents. If you are living your life with a social security card with a spelling difference from your other identity documents, you have a much higher risk tolerance than I do.
Now I’m wondering about how these people got through the I-9 process. Hmmmm.
ETA:
I’m back! I think you could get through with a social security card and a voter registration card, and in Massachusetts if you register on the paper form you can get a voter’s registration card on the basis of your social.
My sympathy for people who refuse to maintain any of the ordinary forms of identity verification is limited. It’s there. It’s just not very enthusiastically there.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-05 01:55 am (UTC)That and a lot of people don't know or have forgotten the difference. For them License=ID. You have the ID that's car-related and the ID that's marriage-related, and they call them both "licenses."