The Last Name Change 

When a couple gets divorced, there is usually – except for those very lucky rare couples who manage to have an “amicable” divorce – some bad blood.   

When you are first married, as a woman at least, the notion of changing your last name from that belonging to your father to that of your husband can be beautiful and symbolic.  You are leaving your parents’ house.  You’re no longer daddy’s little girl.  Your father walks you down the aisle, and hands you off to the new man in your life; the last name change is symbolic of this. It’s what young girls scribble in their notebooks when they have a crush on a boy in school – their first name with his last name, (perhaps inside of a heart on notebook paper while sitting in the park during third period, but I digress).   

And so changing one’s last name seems like an endearing and emblematic part of the marriage process.  But what happens when the happy couple gets divorced?  With that aforementioned bad blood, what woman in her right mind would want to KEEP the last name of a man she no longer wanted to be married to?  Apparently, a lot would.  According to most women I asked, the divorced women they know kept their married name.   

Why?  Reasons include things like children.  Some mothers want to keep the same last name as their children, understandably.  They say that having a different last name as their children is both confusing for their children and society.  One woman said she had a cousin who didn’t want her daughter’s peers asking why she had a different last name as her mother.  Another reason is the sheer difficulty of getting a name legally changed!  A friend of mine said that she kept her ex-husband’s last name because it was just such a hassle to get the name changed back, and she hoped she’d remarry soon enough.  (She did).  

What do you guys think?