Is There a Deadline to Change Your Name After Marriage?



The grounds for refusing a passport are a published list in federal regulation, and most of them have nothing to do with your birth certificate. If your denial letter cites one of them, ordering another copy of anything will not fix it.

The State Department has a remedy for an applicant who can produce neither a passport nor a birth certificate: a search of its own passport files. It costs $150 for records issued before 1994, and for anything issued since, you may pay nothing at all.

A marriage that lasted ten years can entitle you to benefits on your ex-spouse's record, without their consent and without reducing their check. The burden is proving a marriage and a divorce from decades ago.