Travel with GC in married name and Passport in maiden name

[J & K 2]

My wife has her green card in her married name and her passport in her maiden name. Does she have to get a new passport issued in her married name to travel abroad? Is it ok to have the maiden name on the passport as long as the plane ticket matches?

[Inky 1,110]

Travel with the marriage certificate, passport and green card. Thats all you need to do.

There is no requirement to change the passport name - but it does make things easier when traveling.

[varming 2]

Travel with the marriage certificate, passport and green card. Thats all you need to do.

There is no requirement to change the passport name - but it does make things easier when traveling.

And check with the airline. The US requires only her greencard at the port of entry so that should be fine, but the airline getting you there might not be pleased. And to be fair to the airlines, it is not really their job to know that an american marriage license is sufficient documentation for a legal name change.

Edited February 8, 2012 by varming

[Dave&Roza 748]

My wife has her green card in her married name and her passport in her maiden name. Does she have to get a new passport issued in her married name to travel abroad? Is it ok to have the maiden name on the passport as long as the plane ticket matches?

This is one of the reasons I am thankful my wife decided to keep her maiden name. You travel on an official government issued ID and the name on the ticket must match that ID--which is the passport. To gain re-entry into the USA, the GC is used. Most airlines these days check for proper documentation to enter the USA before letting you on any flight. So they will be checking for a visa, VWP, or GC. Lufthansia had the ability to enter the re-entry document into their system, so we entered my wife's GC number. I would take along a copy of the marriage certificate to show the connection between maiden name and married name. One would like to think a person could look at the document and see your husband's last name on the marriage certificate and your maiden name and make the connection that the name on the GC is now your married name and you are one and the same person. It does not hurt to call the airlines or check their website to see if this will be a problem. Nothing worse than about to board the flight back and run into problems.

Have a good trip,

Dave

[Gaijinsan 3]

My wife has her green card in her married name and her passport in her maiden name. Does she have to get a new passport issued in her married name to travel abroad? Is it ok to have the maiden name on the passport as long as the plane ticket matches?

Another thing you can do is have your wife have the passport amended to either change her last name (KEIKO TANAKA, made-up name) or have the name added, e.g. KEIKO TANAKA (SMITH). That's what my wife did with her old passport. The parenthetical notation does not require a legal Japanese name change, although changing it to KEIKO SMITH would require her name be changed on her koseki.

I guess she could do that at either a Japanese consulate in the U.S. or one of the passport agencies while she's in Japan (assuming that this travel is to/from Japan).