My husband and I (USC) went to the Social Security office to apply for his card and to change mine to show my married name. His application was straightforward and quick. Unfortunately, when I tried to apply for mine, they told me my UK marriage certificate was not valid because it did not have "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain" printed on it; the registrar just wrote the town and the county where the marriage took place. (The thing is I checked my parents' marriage certificate, and it doesn't even say the country, just the state.) Though the computer system had an option for the woman to pull up a screen that gives examples of what official British documents look like, i.e. passports and drivers licenses, it did not have an example of a marriage certificate. She told me I would either need to get a new certificate with the country listed or get some sort of official documentation from the Registrar's Office to confirm that the certificate was issued in the United Kingdom and is a valid marriage certificate.
I already have a passport issued with my new name so apparently the marriage certificate met the State Department's standards. Unfortunately, SSA said they could not accept that as proof of my legal name change. We even brought out our big folder of immigration documentation, and though the US embassy, Homeland Security and the State Department are satisfied that we are married, none of the documentation was good enough for SSA. When I asked what I could show as additional proof she said she couldn't tell me, that I would have to ask the Registrar's Office what they could give me, bring that to SSA and they would make a decision. I told the woman that was ridiculous to expect me to call/e-mail back and forth to England and then keep coming back to her office until I found something that would suffice. She suggested I consider getting my name changed legally through the courts and that she was sorry but I should blame 9/11 for all the hassle.
I was wondering if anyone else might have run into any similar difficulties. I might trying going to a different office nearby to see what they have to say. This particular person didn't seem completely with it, especially when she didn't know what the United Kingdom was until my husband explained, and when he told her it can also be known as Great Britain, she asked which country he was from - Great or Britain. Unreal.
A UK Marriage certificate does not have 'United Kingdom' or 'Great Britain' anywhere on it. All it has is the Coat of Arms printed at the top centre, which is all that shows it as an official UK document.
My wife took her US passport and the UK Marriage Certificate to the SSA office (NC) and did not have any issues getting her surname changed.
Dont bother calling any UK Registrar office, you'll be wasting your time.
Sounds to me like the person you saw did not have a clue? Getting your name changed legally through the courts? You've already done it legally! Report her.
She needs to understand that if you've gone this far with the immigration process then you must be legally married, otherwise she's questioning the verification process of the USA immigration system??!?
Great or Britain??? What kind of drugs was she on???
I think you came across a jobsworth tosser.
Is there another office you can go to? Or go back and ask for a supervisor.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.
I agree with the others...you , unfortunately, got a uninformed worker. Id either ask for a supervisor or better yet go to a diffrent office and I bet you get a diffrent result.But its a shame you should not have to go through that.
I agree with the others...you , unfortunately, got a uninformed worker. Id either ask for a supervisor or better yet go to a diffrent office and I bet you get a different result.But its a shame you should not have to go through that.
Ditto. You got an ignorant person at the SS office. Go back and use a different person or go to a different office.
btw, Great Britain and the United Kingdom are NOT the same thing. Great Britain does not include Northern Ireland, but The United Kingdom does.
Sorry for the late reply. I have been busy with some other things here and haven't had much time to go on the forum the last couple months.
Thanks for the advice, D. That helped give me some confidence that I was in the right about this issue.
As an update, a couple days later we went to another office in another town. (The person at the first office told us we would have to make an appointment if we wanted to speak with a supervisor, and we thought it might be easier to just try somewhere else first.) This other office was in an area where they are very used to dealing with people from overseas, particularly people from Europe. TOTALLY different experience. We were greeted by a friendly guard at the door, waited on promptly and the person who handled my paperwork did not question it. She seemed like she was probably very experienced at her job and didn't look at the marriage certificate like it was unusual. I got my new card in the mail about a week later.
Ava, I had thought about doing the name change at the embassy's SS office, but due to some of my own visa issues and some professional issues I had going on at the time we decided it might be wiser to wait until I returned to the US. It sure would have been a whole lot easier to do it your way though!
Btw, we're sorry if the last post made it sound like we didn't recognize the difference between the UK and GB (having 2 very close friends from N. Ireland it's hard not to!). However, I think my husband was just trying to find some sort of terminology the person we were talking to at SSA might understand since not all Americans seem to realize the difference between UK, GB and England.
SSN and marriage certificate
