Name change before AOS

[Kukolka 8]

My fiance wants to change his surname to one part of his current hyphenated surname. Once we're married, I want to change my surname to match his.

He does not want to change his name in Canada before he POEs on the K-1 visa, so as not to cause any complications that would delay us being able to be together.

I do not want to change my name more than once, because it would be unnecessarily tedious to change it everywhere, *twice*.

We will be married in, and residing in, Connecticut. Under Connecticut state law, a woman can change her surname to her husband's surname at the time of marriage, but she cannot choose a new surname. Only the wife can change her name at the time of marriage, the husband must obtain a court order. (So, without a court order, I cannot change my last name to only the part of his hyphenated name that he wants to keep.)

There is no citizenship nor residency requirement to change one's name in Connecticut.

We understand that if he's planning to become a USC, he can change his name then at no extra charge. We do not want to wait that long.

He will need a SSN before changing his name, because Connecticut form PC-901, APPLICATION FOR CHANGE OF NAME (ADULT), requires one. (We know, bring the printout about K-1 visa holders being allowed to get SSNs to the Social Security office.)

So it seems given the circumstances, our best option is to petition the local Probate Court for both of our name changes together, after we have the certified marriage certificate, and before filing for AOS.

Will this likely cause problems with the AOS process?

How about for getting a Canadian passport in his new name?

[Kukolka 8]

There is no citizenship nor residency requirement to change one's name in Connecticut.

I realised I misspoke here: there *is* a residency requirement to change one's name by court order in Connecticut; there's no *length of residency* requirement.

I called the local probate court today to ask whether he needed to get an SSN before petitioning for name change. The clerk said to attach a copy of the visa and explain why he didn't have an SSN yet. That sounds like the better way to do it (name change before SSN).

And since I haven't found anything anywhere whatsoever about the immigrant husband changing his name before AOS, just going by logic, we *should* be able to do the steps in this order: marriage, name change, get SSN, file for AOS. Because immigrant *women* are able to do it (with the marriage and name change in one step); the only difference is the name change document is a court order instead of a marriage certificate.