# Name Change (due to Marriage) in US documents from abroad



## cbastion (Dec 19, 2021)

Hi all,

my girlfriend (United States citizen) and I (German citizen) are going to marry next year, and she is planning to take over my last name (by german name law).
Now we are already preparing the name change of all US documents, but are struggling a bit with regard to the order of things and the fact that we need to send original documents overseas while staying paperless abroad. For instance, we are having two main concerns:

1) Should we update the SSN first or the passport first? There doesn't seem to be a way to do this in a one way step, and both require us to hand in the old passport.
2) According to what we find written on the government web pages so far, it seems to be required to send in the original passport for both changes. If we would be able to get a personal appointment at the consulate or FBU (both seem to be not very well reachable these days...) is it sufficient to show the original proof of identity just to them, or do they have to send it overseas as well?

Maybe someone has already had experience with the whole name changing procedure from overseas or specifically from Germany and can share some experiences or tipps?

Happy holidays and thanks in advance for any kind of advice!


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## Überling (Mar 18, 2021)

Hmm, your situation is a flipped version my own. In my case I am the US citizen and my wife is the German citizen. She’d been living in the US for 30 years before we met. We got married earlier this year and moved to Germany 2.5 months ago. She changed her last name to mine, something that is quick and relatively painless if you do it along with the marriage license. She then updated her SSN, DMV, bank and insurances, in that order. About the only thing we had done in preparation for the move was getting our marriage license apostilled…but it would have been better to also have it officially translated (same with her previous divorce papers), since we ended up having to do that in Germany (to the tune of €500).

We moved to a small village near Trier, where my wife’s family lives. I immediately registered with the Ausländerbehörde my intention to become a resident based on being the spouse of a German citizen. The advantage to having family here is that they provided us with a temporary residence, which is needed to get a bank account, which is needed to get any services (Internet, utilities, etc.) and credit cards. It’s also needed to get officially approved health insurance, which the Ausländerbehörde requires for residency along with proof of a source of income source. All that we were prepared for.

What we didn’t expect was that I had to show basic proficiency with the German language. I hadn’t seen that in any of my research, but fortunately I’d been studying German with Duolingo for several years, so I was able to pass a practice test. However, I had to schedule a test with the Göethe Institut in Bonn, a couple hours away. That wasn’t a fun day, but I passed easily.

Getting health insurance is critical, and if possible you want to avoid having to get private health insurance for a couple reasons: first, it’s several times more expensive than public health insurance; and second, they won’t cover pre-existing conditions for at least two years (and even then, only if those pre-existing conditions cause no problems during that time). The only good thing about private insurance is better service because they pay out more for medical services.

As the spouse of a German citizen, I am evidently entitled to public health insurance. However, the public health insurance company wouldn’t accept me without my residency visa…but the Ausländerbehörde wouldn’t give me my residency visa without proof of health insurance. So the two departments wrestled awhile until the health insurance company agreed to give me temporary health insurance and the Ausländerbehörde agreed to give me temporary residence. Only then did I get my full health insurance card and my residency visa paperwork was submitted. Whew. You’d think the various German bureaucracies talk to one another, but apparently not.

To our surprise, my wife’s divorce papers turned out to be the biggest problem. The Standesamt (which processes the “Namensanerkennungsverfahren” to ensure she’s not married to two people at the same time) wouldn’t accept her divorce papers in order to change her last name to mine…even though the papers were an official copy, they were acceptable enough for our marriage license in the US, and her name was legally changed in the US! They wanted to speak with her ex to ask him if they were legally divorced.

WTF? He and my wife had _not_ parted on amicable terms, and he is the sort who would maliciously do what he could to make things difficult for her, so asking him would be a disaster. Fortunately, he also moved overseas and nobody has any contact with him anymore. But my wife was required to track down all the potential contacts who might know how to contact him in an attempt to get his contact information, and then provide the Standesamt with the documentation of the contact attempts and sign a sworn testimony that she can’t get in contact with her ex. Yikes.

We’re currently waiting for the results. If they don’t accept the name change, her passport will no longer match her name change in the US. Worse, it will mean they don’t accept her divorce, which means they won’t accept our marriage license, which could mean my residency would be revoked? We won’t find out until next year.

So…is any of that helpful for your situation? I don’t know. But I would _highly_ recommend you contact the Ausländerbehörde where you are moving to find out exactly what they’ll need from your fiancé.


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## cbastion (Dec 19, 2021)

Thanks for sharing your experiences!
In our case, we got lucky that all German marriage and residency related paperwork has gone through alreadye, and we don't expect further issues with regard to that. The Ausländeramt has assured us that we can update residency easy, if we have the updated US passport, which itself can be updated with the international marriage certificate. So we will do that one as a first, before we start anything else in Germany.

The only thing that we have been a bit unsure so far is the order of the US stuff:
We read that it might be better to update SSN first, before updating the passport. However, that means we have to send the old passport twice to the US and back. And meanwhile, we cannot start any other process regarding the name change here in Germany. Not to speak of my wife not being able to id herself (since the residency papers are technically only valid with a corresponding passport).


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## Überling (Mar 18, 2021)

cbastion said:


> Thanks for sharing your experiences!
> In our case, we got lucky that all German marriage and residency related paperwork has gone through alreadye, and we don't expect further issues with regard to that. The Ausländeramt has assured us that we can update residency easy, if we have the updated US passport, which itself can be updated with the international marriage certificate. So we will do that one as a first, before we start anything else in Germany.
> 
> The only thing that we have been a bit unsure so far is the order of the US stuff:
> We read that it might be better to update SSN first, before updating the passport. However, that means we have to send the old passport twice to the US and back. And meanwhile, we cannot start any other process regarding the name change here in Germany. Not to speak of my wife not being able to id herself (since the residency papers are technically only valid with a corresponding passport).


Hmm, I can’t be sure what the correct answer is, but I believe we had to get the SSN taken care of first. I’m not sure that she had to send in her passport for this, but it did take months to get completed.
Good luck!


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## Überling (Mar 18, 2021)

Correction! I had that completely wrong; I was thinking of her green card.

For the SS card, it turns out my wife just made an appointment with the Social Security Administration office, where she then showed them all the paperwork they requested, and a few weeks later she received the updated SS card in the mail. Piece of cake. However, we were in the US and you apparently are not. But shouldn’t this be something easy enough for the US embassy/consulate to take care of? You can at least contact them through here and ask them: Social Security


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Generally speaking, Überling is right - for Social Security matters it's best to go through the local Embassy/Consulate if they have an FBU (Federal Benefits Unit). The only issue at the moment is whether or not they are taking appointments for SS matters like this with whatever the current restrictions are for Covid in Germany. But they should be able to process the name change without having to actually send a passport back to the US for processing. 

Start here: Consular Services
and scroll down to Federal Programs, where you'll find a link to Social Security.


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