Stelare

I'm Aussie born and have dual citizenship, became a US citizen 3 years ago (started off as a K1, married in the US). My Australian passport expired a long time ago and when I started making plans to get a new one, the pandemic happened and I had a child. I am looking to travel back to Australia late next year but will need to enter and exit Australia on an Australian passport (as per their rules). Being married in the US, it's a whole complicated (and expensive) process to get a new Australian passport in my married name and much simpler to just get an Australian passport in my maiden name. My ideal situation would be to just go ahead and get my Aus passport in my maiden name and travel into Australia with that. I'm wondering if there are any implications I need to be aware of if I travel out of the US on a foreign passport in my maiden name (since tickets will need to be done in my maiden name), even though I am a US citizen. I still need to get my daughter a US passport, so the plan would be to just go ahead and get mine as well, so I would be able to have that on hand as proof of US citizenship. The US passport would be in my married name. My googling tells me I'd need to carry a marriage certificate and both passports to show the name change, but I'm trying to be extra sure of any problems that could come up when I go to re-enter the US (given that all my citizenship stuff was done in my married name) or things that I need to be extra aware of/would need to carry with me to make this work. And just to clarify, obviously whilst that's ideal, I'm aware it may not necessarily work so I'm still willing to work through the process of getting an Aus passport in my maiden name. It would just cut down on the added stress of travelling such a long distance for the first time in many years, with a toddler in tow.