Getting Canadian Passport Changed to Married Name

[Veroneek 0]

It's allowed its just traditional not to.

I can assure you it is not allow in the Quebec Province, I did my research lol. There are only a few reasons you can change your name, and getting married isnt one of them.

[Lemonslice 4,841]

It's allowed its just traditional not to.

Actually, it's not allowed and quite difficult to do. Your maiden name has to be "unsuitable" for them to authorize it.

"Under the Civil Code of Québec, both spouses retain their respective names in marriage and exercise civil rights under those names. Consequently, if a married woman wants to adopt her spouse's surname, the Directeur de l'état civil will authorize that change of name only in an exceptional situation."

[Transborderwife 4,666]

Actually, it's not allowed and quite difficult to do. Your maiden name has to be "unsuitable" for them to authorize it.

"Under the Civil Code of Québec, both spouses retain their respective names in marriage and exercise civil rights under those names. Consequently, if a married woman wants to adopt her spouse's surname, the Directeur de l'état civil will authorize that change of name only in an exceptional situation."

My mistake ☺️

[Lemonslice 4,841]

My mistake ☺️

No worries, it is peculiar in North America

[Transborderwife 4,666]

No worries, it is peculiar in North America

I just had a québécois friend who once told me it was simply a tradition so she lied lol

[NikLR 13,227]

Well, it is Quebec.

[moemac59 192]

Thanks for the replies.

So do we have to surrender the old one? It has the K-1 visa in it, and we will be working on a limited time frame here. For reference, we'd be coming into Canada on a Thursday, late afternoon. We plan on staying until Monday morning, and since those places aren't usually open during the weekend, are we out of luck hoping to get this done on this trip?

Also, we are currently in the AOS process, and Danielle has both her EAD and AP in her married name, State ID (Wisconsin) in married name, marriage certificate. We filed AOS in September 2015, so I don't know if we'll have her GC by then, so yeah, we will definitely need her old passport back. It is an option to pay the $100.00 to have it shipped to the United States, but keep the old one, or is that not possible?

If you are travelling back to Canada with an AP card, you will need the Canadian passport to get back into the US. This will be used in conjunction with the AP card.

When she gets "paroled" back in to the US, she will have to go into secondary, get photographed and fingerprinted. They will then stamp the back of her Canadian passport and write the date in the stamp.

I have NEXUS and when I was going thru AOS, I couldn't use my NEXUS card coming back into the US and had to be paroled back into the US with the Canadian passport/AP card.

[Danielle and Jake 24]

So they won't just let us pass through coming back? We will have to go inside and wait an hour to do that? That's a little worrying, it just makes me feel like something will go wrong and they will deny her entry for some weird reason, or because the officer is just having a bad day.

[Transborderwife 4,666]

There is the off chance of a denial, but she'll probably be fine

[Danielle and Jake 24]

I've just never heard of the part where we will get stopped, taken inside, and do all that. From my understanding, when she travels with her AP, we will need to bring her passport (in maiden name), AP/EAD combo card, and a marriage certificate to "connect the dots" with the name change (her AP/EAD is in her married name). You just hear all these horror stories and all with this or that person regarding this process and it just ramps up anxiety big time.

[NikLR 13,227]

You can get expedited passports in Canada.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/passport/times.asp

[moemac59 192]

So they won't just let us pass through coming back? We will have to go inside and wait an hour to do that? That's a little worrying, it just makes me feel like something will go wrong and they will deny her entry for some weird reason, or because the officer is just having a bad day.

Nope not if she is coming thru on an AP card as her AOS application is still pending. Honestly, coming back and being paroled in does not take that long. When I use to cross over to Canada and then come back to NYS, the AP process took about 15 mins to do. I usually would have to tell the US agent that I had to be paroled in as my AOS application was still pending. Half the time the US - CPB guys at POE would have no clue what to do with the AP card and would have to radio their super to get the information. Once you get inside to secondary, the IO's are there and it is a piece of cake. They are usually pretty nice too.

[Ms Hogan 295]

Well, it is Quebec.

No worries, it is peculiar in North America

Quebec makes everything peculiar!

[Danielle and Jake 24]

Nope not if she is coming thru on an AP card as her AOS application is still pending. Honestly, coming back and being paroled in does not take that long. When I use to cross over to Canada and then come back to NYS, the AP process took about 15 mins to do. I usually would have to tell the US agent that I had to be paroled in as my AOS application was still pending. Half the time the US - CPB guys at POE would have no clue what to do with the AP card and would have to radio their super to get the information. Once you get inside to secondary, the IO's are there and it is a piece of cake. They are usually pretty nice too.

Thanks for the reply! I can fully understand that. When I moved Danielle here and we crossed with her K1, we were there for over an hour. A good chunk was just waiting in line, which was kind of frustrating because there was a NEXUS line where whoever got in line could pretty much cut in front of whoever was waiting in the other. The first person showing up wasn't bad, but when it got to be 3, 4, 5 in a row... yeah. Then once we got inside, nobody knew what to do with a K1 Visa. One officer actually said "I haven't seen one of these in years", and eventually there were 4 officers huddled around all the packet, passport, etc.Then a 5th officer had to walk up with a little booklet telling them step by step what to do. Meanwhile during this portion, they would just randomly ask us "when are you guys getting married?" over and over, minutes apart, which was weird. Nobody was really mean of anything, it was just a little concerning how that went down and how it took 5 people and a booklet to figure it out, so I guess that's where some of my concern comes from in traveling with Danielle and her AP. Makes me fear that when we try to cross back, they will not know what to do or be like "This is no good, turn around".

So you mention that you had to state your AOS was pending. Should that be another document we bring with us, like the NOA2 or whatever for our AOS, to kind of show that? I feel like we should be getting contacted anytime soon for that regardless, because looking at the current processing times for the Milwaukee Service Center, as of 01/31/2016, they were processing applications from August 1st, 2015. We filed ours within the first week of September 2015 (so a month later), and it's mid-March (so a month and a half after there "as of" date), so if it's a linear correlation, we should be hearing anytime, but I assume that's not the case. We've just been in "Fingerprint Fee Was Received" status since OCtober when we did the biometrics.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Danielle and Jake

[moemac59 192]

Thanks for the reply! I can fully understand that. When I moved Danielle here and we crossed with her K1, we were there for over an hour. A good chunk was just waiting in line, which was kind of frustrating because there was a NEXUS line where whoever got in line could pretty much cut in front of whoever was waiting in the other. The first person showing up wasn't bad, but when it got to be 3, 4, 5 in a row... yeah. Then once we got inside, nobody knew what to do with a K1 Visa. One officer actually said "I haven't seen one of these in years", and eventually there were 4 officers huddled around all the packet, passport, etc.Then a 5th officer had to walk up with a little booklet telling them step by step what to do. Meanwhile during this portion, they would just randomly ask us "when are you guys getting married?" over and over, minutes apart, which was weird. Nobody was really mean of anything, it was just a little concerning how that went down and how it took 5 people and a booklet to figure it out, so I guess that's where some of my concern comes from in traveling with Danielle and her AP. Makes me fear that when we try to cross back, they will not know what to do or be like "This is no good, turn around".

So you mention that you had to state your AOS was pending. Should that be another document we bring with us, like the NOA2 or whatever for our AOS, to kind of show that? I feel like we should be getting contacted anytime soon for that regardless, because looking at the current processing times for the Milwaukee Service Center, as of 01/31/2016, they were processing applications from August 1st, 2015. We filed ours within the first week of September 2015 (so a month later), and it's mid-March (so a month and a half after there "as of" date), so if it's a linear correlation, we should be hearing anytime, but I assume that's not the case. We've just been in "Fingerprint Fee Was Received" status since OCtober when we did the biometrics.

You are most welcome. Yes bring the NOA with you. This will show USCIS that you have a current AOS application which is being adjudicated. They shouldn't decline entry back into the US with the AP but if you have concerns about this then maybe just call that particular border crossing to get information or ask if they are familiar with the AP card and how to process someone coming back into the US with it. It can't hurt and this way you can also get an officer name so if you do have an issue coming back into the US, you can say "Well I spoke to officer so and so on the phone on such and such date and he/she informed me that....etc. etc. etc.

Hope that this helps. Yeah it sucks when the POE agents don't know what they are doing. I work in Canada and come home on Friday nights and always end up with the same tool CPB agent who asks a 1000 questions and always likes to go through my car as well as the cars in front and behind me. Hoping that this won't be an issue once I take my US Citizenship Oath in a month.