Features

Three Simple Benefits of the Two-Family Solution

by LaSara Firefox

With respect, a clear understanding of the rules, and a whole lotta love for the kids, ex-spouses are redefining family.

Some call it divorce; I call it the “Two-Family Solution.” Assuming your divorce was peaceful and you and your ex have basic respect for one another, there’s no reason not to revel in the benefits the Two-Family Solution can bring to you and your kids.

Benefit 1: You get a weekly, kid-free vacation!

How many of your mom and dad friends would kill for just one night off a week? Sometimes, heartless as it may sound, I find myself gloating when I reflect on the weekly Tuesday night dates my new hubby and I share. It’s a ritual for us.

Truly, our date night can be a lifesaver, even when it’s days away.

Don’t get me wrong - I miss my girls when they’re gone. But those moments when it’s just me and my thoughts - or my man - are the real benefit of those kid-free days.

Benefit 2: You get to teach your kids that more than one set of rules may apply.

The world is a wide, wild, and varied place with sometimes complexly convoluted rules.

Ideally, you and your ex will have agreed on basic ground rules about school conduct, drugs, alcohol, and dating, and what discipline measures are within bounds. My ex and I had to institute a “reporting” clause because our younger child was playing sides, and we had to show her we were still the boss(es).

It’s not your right, though, to tell your ex that he can’t feed the kids meat just because you’ve gone vegan. (That’s the kids’ negotiation to undertake.)

Despite your areas of agreement or disagreement, never badmouth the other parent’s rules! Besides, one of the kids is sure to come to the other parent’s defense and rebel against your rules in retaliation.

Benefit 3. Your kids get more of everything: parents, relatives, people saving money for their future, gifts on holidays, support, and love! (And, in the best-case scenario, so do you!)

I couldn’t afford a 2-week vacation to Maui at a five-star resort just after the ex and I split, but the kids got to go with their dad’s parents. It was perfect for them to be able to have such a memorable, relaxing vacation in the middle of what was an admittedly tough time.

And although fewer of us are able to save for college these days, some extended family members are starting rainy-day funds for some very loved and very lucky kids. In emergencies - financial or otherwise -it’s nice to know a crew at hand to bail you and yours out.

The Two-Family Solution can help minimize holiday struggles too. Through patience, dedication, and a basis of shared values, you and your ex may reach a point where, like me, you share family holidays. With each divorce and remarriage in my own huge family, we’ve only gotten stronger and more diverse, while enjoying the benefits - and, of course, the (mostly minor) irritations - that any family brings. In those moments of familial camaraderie as we sit around a holiday table graced with food, the benefits outweigh the exasperations by a long shot.

If you and your ex and your family get along, plus new spouses and their exes get along, and the new spouses’ families like the ex-spouses’ families and your family - that’s a lot of love! And a lot of support when you and the kids need it most.

This is the response of the postdivorce generation. As our children grow, marry - and perhaps divorce - and have children of their own, we will continue the new tradition of inclusion. And slowly, generation by generation, family will just be family; however we choose to build or define it.

LaSara Firefox, a coach, author, and educator, helps people find balance in their lives and alignment with their personal and family-held values. Media across the country have featured her latest project, Gratitude Games. See www.lasarafirefox.com .

It’s Never Too Late

They’re off on their Harleys or to a dancing lesson on Saturday night. The fun isn’t over for these young-as-you-feel couples who’ve found a new lease on life - and romance.

by  Patricia J. Lasher

Debbie had only been divorced a few months, but after 25 years of marriage, she wasn’t used to dating. The slightly-past-middle-age mother of three let herself rush into a relationship.

“It was too quick, too soon,” she recalls, not bitterly, but with a note of puzzlement in her otherwise animated tone. “Finally, after that relationship quickly ended, I had reached the point that I was happy, on my own, for the first time in my life, ready to have fun and ready to take my time as far as any relationship. I was happy to travel with girlfriends, do things I had never had a chance to do. . . . I wasn’t looking for anyone else to make me happy.”

And when she unexpectedly fell in love with Scott, 11 years her junior, Debbie was reluctant to tell her family and grown children. “I was worried about what others would think about me going into another relationship.” She enjoyed a year of courtship, then a romantic and surprising wedding proposal that whisked her off her feet. That family she was worried about informing came a hundred-plus strong to their 2004 wedding. Their only complaint? Now these lovebirds are often too busy to watch the grandchildren. Debbie recently bought a Harley-Davidson to match Scott’s, and, she says, “We’re off riding nearly every other weekend.”

Statistically, Debbie’s remarriage is the rule, not the exception. A study of the patterns of remarriage following divorce in this country by Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics in 2002 indicates that the odds that remarriage will occur are better than even. According to this study, 75 percent of divorced women remarry within 10 years of divorce.

Remarriage, especially after a long first (or subsequent), established marriage, adds a whole new level of complexity, from household belongings to finances.  Monies from a divorce settlement, or a survivor’s annuity, Social Security benefits, or medical insurance coverage may automatically cease. (Information  is available on the Social Security Administration website .) Alimony payments that a divorced spouse receives usually end when that person remarries; on the other hand, a paying spouse who remarries must continue his or her obligation, causing more than a few parties in the new relationship to hesitate before saying I do. In addition, marital agreements and airtight trusts often keep a spouse responsible for the long-term care of the divorced spouse, sometimes even affecting Medicaid eligibility.

For businesswoman Gloria Berthold of Elkridge, Maryland, remarriage was not even on the radar screen. Divorced for 21 years, Berthold’s life was a busy but satisfying whirl of business - she runs a company that helps others seek government contracts - and good times with a tight circle of wonderful friends.

“I had been in relationships over the years, but had really given up on the idea of remarriage,” she says. So when Berthold received a call from her broker, Patrick Larkin, she assumed he was calling “to ask me to invest some more funds.” But after that one lunch date, the couple saw each other with “different eyes,” Berthold says, and pretty soon the decision to remarry was “shockingly clear cut.” They married a year later, in May 2008, with the blessings of Patrick’s children. The biggest challenge, she says, has been that of getting used to a new last name. “When you’ve been in business or in a career and built up a reputation with a name, it is really difficult to make the switch, but I never doubted that I would use ‘Larkin’ once we were married.”

Kids at Heart

Ah, the children. Patrick Larkin’s first wife had died of breast cancer after a long and happy 39-year marriage, and his adult son and daughter welcomed someone into their dad’s life.  “The children have been so supportive,” says Gloria Larkin, who had none of her own. “I think they are pleased to see their dad happy.”

Jack and Shirley Cohen Wald met at nightly synagogue services; Jack had been a widower for several years, but Shirley’s husband had only recently died. Her children were still mourning, as was she, the loss of their father, and were reluctant to accept a new man in her life. Over the next 3 years, Jack and Shirley’s friendship grew, and they brought both sets of children and grandchildren together on holidays.

The families finally grew comfortable - then happy - about the marriage when 67-year-old Shirley married 80-year-old Jack, about 10 years ago. “Holidays are wonderful now,” Shirley said, when discussing her golden years’ marriage last fall. “Each of our children takes a holiday and everyone comes together. I think of Jack’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren as mine and he feels that way about mine.” Jack’s granddaughter, Ilene Glickman Horwitz, a family law attorney in Towson, Maryland, says, “Shirley became the matriarch of our family and took us all under her wing.”  Jack Wald died in April, 2009, and as a loving, blended family, they bid their farewells to Jack and celebrated his rich life.

Not all offspring are so accommodating. Those adult children who so vehemently spurned parental advice when diving into their own marriages are often pretty loose with unsolicited advice for their own parents who contemplate remarriage.

Accountant Kathy Becker of Columbia, Maryland, believes that when you “get married, you get married, with all that it involves.” She and her husband of 5 years each have an adult child from prior marriages. “Everyone gets along great,” she reports. As for estate planning, Becker and her spouse decided to provide by will for each other, with a level of trust between them that each would be fair to the other’s child. “Today it’s hard to be sure you have enough for retirement and long-term care,” she says, “so unless the estate is bigger than ours, there’s not enough to even think about setting aside trusts for children.” But, of course, some larger estates require separate trusts or stronger plans; many CPAs advise couples to put financial agreements into prenuptial or carefully worded postmarital agreements.

“It seems that adult children are either really in favor of the later marriage, or really against it,” says John Abosch, a CPA and personal financial specialist and estate planner with Baltimore-based KAWG&F. Dealing with sophisticated clients, Abosch says that, at minimum, parties should look at the tax consequences of marriage along with the estate ramifications. “Written agreements, where both of the parties are represented and understand their rights, can prevent some of the current extended family distrust and family disputes that often arise.”

Among the issues that clients ask matrimonial lawyers to address include support in the event of death or divorce, property brought into the marriage, disposition of personal property, life insurance trusts, real estate ownership, medical directives, powers of attorney, and living wills. Family law attorney Liz Scheffee says that almost all of her older clients who contemplate a later remarriage have premarital agreements. The Portland, Maine, matrimonial lawyer notes that it’s “usually to protect the kids, and, perhaps, assure them as well.”

“The older gentlemen are more generous in negotiating prenups than the younger men,” Scheffee adds, “most likely because they already know what their future holds…if you get my drift.” In short, “there is less future to negotiate about, and the estate is a known quantity rather than a potential one. I find the premarital agreements for older people are more about estate planning and preserving each person’s asset base for the kids. For younger couples, the prenups are more about what happens on divorce rather than death.”

Yours, Mine, or Ours

High up on the checklist of issues for these later-in-life couples is housing, whether a spouse has died or individuals are moving out of an established postdivorce situation. For the Walds, the “your place or mine” question was easily resolved: Each sold homes, and the couple moved to Leisure World, an active retirement community outside of Washington, DC. “Everything that had belonged to their mother went to Jack’s children and grandchildren before we moved,” Shirley says. “I wanted them to know that their mother’s things were theirs.” Debbie and Scott solved the question by purchasing a home together along with an RV that has them spending the occasional weekend with family in tow. Patrick moved into Gloria’s residence, and they’ve discovered a new hobby: getting Patrick’s home ready to sell. Most weekends these days, says Gloria, “we are do-it-yourselfers: painting, carpeting. We’re doing it all.”

When one spouse moves into the other’s family home without receiving legal title, big questions can arise in the event of death or subsequent divorce. Without a prior written agreement of the parties, the divorce agreement - or, as a last resort, the courts - will have to stipulate who may remain on premises. If the marriage ends in death without wills, state law may address the resolution. A few states, in some instances, do grant a surviving spouse homestead rights for the remainder of his or her life. In other states, the parties who inherit the family home can decide whether the surviving spouse may remain - and under what terms - or must vacate.

Annette and Hal Kuntz celebrated their remarriage last year by buying a penthouse apartment in Texas. “We each sold our homes and sold, stored, gave away, or incorporated some of our furniture and furnishings.” Between her beach house and his ranches, which they kept, both were ready to give up the yard and the upkeep for a home in the city. “It has also been fun to find new items that we both like, says Annette, a family court judge, “making this home truly ‘ours.’ ” The biggest excitement came when the hot tub, delivered and placed by a helicopter, was set on their patio overlooking the Houston skyline.

Going for the Gold

Although the number of cohabiting senior citizens is on the increase, marriage in the golden years is still a welcome option to many. Research holds that married seniors are more likely to eat breakfast, wear seat belts, engage in physical activity, have their blood pressure checked, and avoid smoking than widowed elderly persons. The benefits of marriage tend to be more substantial for elderly men than for elderly women, according to a 1998 study by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality).

If Olympic medals were awarded to the couple best suited to represent the joys and benefits of remarriage in the senior years, then Jane and Albert Schleuter, now 84 and 80, respectively, would be in the running. The couple met several years ago down the hall from their apartments in the Charlestown Retirement Community, located in a Baltimore suburb. This past July, the Schleuters celebrated their fourth anniversary, squeezing a lunch celebration with family in between plans to work on the community’s Benevolent Care Foundation Treasure Sale, crab feasts, and dinner dates with friends.

Contradictions and laughter greet my question, How did you meet? “A friend introduced us at the elevator,” says Al. “That’s not right,” Jane quickly interrupts. “I was waiting for an elevator, and you walked right up and introduced yourself.”

On almost everything else, though, they seem to agree. As they dined frequently together, each talked about the lack of desire to remarry. After a little more than a year, when friends asked them to come along on a trip to Italy, Al popped the question. Jane said yes, without hesitation. “Our friends said they knew before we did that we’d marry,” she says. “We just always, from the start, held hands.”

Like a storybook, Al picked out Jane’s lavender wedding dress and she chose his new suit for the big day. They exchanged vows in the magnificent chapel Our Lady of the Angels on the 110-acre retirement community’s grounds. More than 80 guests celebrated with the couple, including most of their families: Jane has three children, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren; Al, who lost a son several years ago, has a surviving daughter, two grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. Jane and her sister made the six wedding cakes offered up at the reception.

Without a backward glance, Jane moved to Al’s apartment in the 2,000-member community. “It was larger,” he says. Jane’s family antiques and other furniture went to her children. “They would have gotten it someday, anyway,” Jane adds.

When it came to family members, encouragement from both sides was strong. “I called my children to say I’d met someone. They said, ‘Mom, you don’t have to tell us what you’re doing.’ Then I called to say I was going to Italy and got the same response. Finally, I said, ‘I want you to meet Al,’ and the response was ‘It’s about time.’ ”

Reluctant to give advice to others, both do agree that being able to talk easily to each other is a major consideration in choosing a partner. “Oh, yes,” Jane adds, “and holding hands.”

Former family court associate judge, reMarriage’s legal columnist Patricia J. Lasher, shuttles back and forth between homes in Houston, Texas, and Baltimore, Maryland.

Taming That Summertime Chaos Monster

Warring vacations and visitations, bored teenagers. . . . What’s a parent to do? Plan, plan, and plan, say the successful, and you’ll bring that beast to heel.

by Mary K. Zajac

My friend Ann in Philadelphia was relishing a weekend alone with the baby as we chatted about vacation plans. But the days ahead were as much as she could handle. “As of Monday night, we have the baby plus two [children]; the following Sunday, we have the baby plus four. That’s hard enough to keep track of, let alone summer plans!”

Perspective is everything. As a child, you anxiously await the last day of school and the promise of wide-open days filled with sleeping and swimming, biking, and unending video games. As a parent, the promise of children’s idle (read lazy) days becomes time to fill with meaningful activities, camps and classes, and supervised instruction.

As a stepparent, things get even more complicated. Your spouse’s daughter wants to spend the summer scrapbooking. Your son has swim team practice, and your ex’s new spouse has an elaborate European vacation planned. And that’s not even considering the teenagers who basically want to do absolutely nothing.

How do you even begin to manage the chaos that is your kids’ summer vacation?

“Refrigerator magnets, color-coded calendars, and highlighters,” jokes Ann, when she focuses seriously on my planning questions. For someone who juggles the schedules of five kids (two hers, two his, one theirs), I think she’s pretty cheerful when she adds, “Then there’s everything that you let slide.”

Other moms of blended families agree that organization is essential. “The key to planning the summer is just that - planning the summer,” says Valerie Walker, a remarried mother of one and stepmother of two. She’s also a professional organizer and president of her own company, Destination Organized.

Walker begins ordering her family’s summer in March, poring over camp descriptions that come out in early spring, mapping out custody schedules, checking with her ex-husband’s wife and her husband’s ex-wife to see when they want to schedule vacations. She enters every bit of information into an electronic calendar spreadsheet. Once everyone has made their plans, she, as she describes it, “maps it all out like a report” and sends it to both parents. Even throughout the year, she fields phone calls from the other parents asking for reminders of what’s happening when. Despite the amount of work involved, Walker is happy to be the organizer.

“It helps to know who’s doing what,” she explains. “We can’t wing it when there’s this much going on. It’s a lot of kids, a lot of responsibilities. Our regimen doesn’t change unless we plan it.”

My friend Ann’s philosophy of scheduling is much the same: Schedule early and stick to it, even if that means not being able to take advantage of every opportunity. Usually, the pluses outweigh the minuses.

“We don’t go away too much,” she says of herself and her husband. “But every couple of years, my husband’s mom likes to take the extended family on vacation. A couple years ago, she took the family to Mexico, but the kids’ weeks were already planned. I had to say, ‘Sorry.’ ”

“This year, we were mapping out the summer,” she continues, “and I told her, ‘If you’re planning to do a family vacation this year, here’s the week we can do it.’ And she booked it right away.”

Claudette Chêvenert has seen lots of blended families in her practice as a life coach. But she’s also seen summertime issues crop up in her own family.

Her son and stepdaughters are now grown, but she remembers the time when her son traveled to his father’s farm in Canada for the summer. “When I called,” she remembers, “[my son] would start crying. He wanted to come home, and my ex-husband got upset. Before I called, my son didn’t have issues.”

Similarly, when Chênevert and her husband took the newly blended family to Disney World, her stepdaughters wanted to call their mother every day. “It became disruptive,” she says. “We were trying to create new shared experience and bond with them.” But when the girls called home, “they got homesick and began crying. Then I felt very incompetent because I felt I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t comfort them. They wanted their mom.”

Looking back, Chênevert says she wishes she would have set ground rules before they left for vacation, allowing the girls to call home a given number of times, but not every day.

Homesickness is just one aspect of the stress that comes with summer vacations. Communication and negotiation - with the other parent and with the child - are key, says Chênevert, who experienced much of that firsthand. She urges blended families to plan summers together. Having a round-robin-type meeting where “everybody has a say in what they would like to see in a vacation…makes everybody feel they have a part,” explains Chênevert.

“Sometimes visiting children feel they’re not part of a family,” she adds, “especially if they’re not part of decision making. I think it’s a wise thing for parents to sit together, plan together as a family, and negotiate. It’s teaching children negotiation skills.”

Stepmom Paula Bisacre, and reMarriage’s founder, takes this strategy one step further. Negotiation and discussion are fine, she says, but “sometimes you have to be strong about creating time to bond. Even if no one would choose it, a family vacation is critical when you’re getting to know each other. You might have to put your foot down for the good of all.”

But even careful planning can’t account for variables that make up summer. What if one parent can afford a more extravagant vacation and the other, only something modest? What if parents have different ideas on how summers should be spent?

Returning home from a vacation can also create stress in families, especially when their economic status differs. We’re comfortable, says Ann, “but my ex and his wife do quite well financially. So our situation pretty much runs the full gamut of household incomes and vacation/camp arrangements.” The vacations Ann’s husband’s children have with their mom are often limited to trips to the local bowling alley or park, while Ann’s ex and his wife have the means to take Ann’s children to Cape Cod or Florida.

About her children’s different experiences, Ann says this: “I think for the most part they understand that different families do things differently.” Still, she’s relieved when the visitation schedule staggers the kids’ returns home from their vacations with their parents.

Even though parents in blended families realize they can’t control what their children do on vacation with another parent, it can still be frustrating when parents have to negotiate how children will spend the rest of their time. When Ann’s son qualified for a special summer reading program, she “couldn’t wait to sign him up.” But her ex-husband said, “That’s not what summer’s for. Summer’s for fun.”

“I decided, ‘I’m not going to fight this battle,’ ” says Ann. Others might negotiate a balance between something frivolous and life affirming: If she attends Spanish class this summer, then she can go to that video game convention with you.

Walker experienced just the opposite when her husband’s ex-wife hadn’t come up with a plan for the children while she worked during the summer. In what’s become an unspoken agreement, Walker signs all three children up for summer camp, calculates the cost, and submits receipts and a schedule to the children’s mother. No one complains and the children have adequate activities to keep them busy and away from the television.

But what’s most important, most moms say, is putting the kids first. Kathryn M. separated from her husband when her youngest daughters were 9 and 12. After eight years of separation, the couple eventually reconciled, but during their time apart, says Kathryn, “We made the decision that the girls’ lives should be as normal as possible.”

“My husband and I had to keep an open relationship even though I wanted to kill him. We weren’t going to have family holidays or family vacations taken away from [the girls],” she says, “We wanted it to be life as usual.”

Like many children of divorced parents, the girls ended up taking separate vacations with both their mother and their father, but at that age, fitting in two vacations was easy. What was more important than any vacation, though, says Kathryn, was that the girls knew “there was always so much love for them on both sides.”

Mary K. Zajac is a freelance writer living in Baltimore, Maryland.

My Ex - My BFF

Love? You bet. Live together? No way. But we’re awfully good at the art of emotional rescue and nonsexual healing.

by Anne Goodfriend

Take this, Britney, Heather, Christie: My ex-husband, David, is my best friend. Forever.

No celeb-style divorce for us - as “fifth Beatle” Billy Preston sang, “Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’ …” - although it did take 5 months for David to move out after we painfully agreed to part.

And it took as many years before we started meeting for lunch occasionally. Along the way, I met Bill: We fell in love immediately and mythically, and, although we were both altar-shy at this stage of life, we finally moved in together.

Meanwhile, David was miserable; evidently, as I found out much later. He’d given up trying to meet someone. That dismayed me, because he’s a good man with a big heart who should be paired - just not with me.

Bill understood our friendship; in fact, he and David liked each other a lot. We’d go to the Dairy Godmother together for frozen custard, and Bill would cook wonderful dinners for the three of us. We often went to hear David’s band play their blues-flavored rock ‘n’ roll.

David continued to pour his heart out to me over our sporadic lunches, while I tried to boost his spirits. We often remarked on what a deep friendship we had despite our failed marriage and how we had remained the parents of our longhaired dachshunds, who probably kept us together longer than we should have been. He’d taken custody (he was better able), but I visited, and the four of us hung out happily. When Teddy, the elder dog, became severely ill, David asked me to go along to put him down. We cried together and swore we’d always be there for each other.

Many of our friends and relatives wondered at how close we grew post-divorce. They’d never heard of such an epilogue. While some exes remain civil “for the children,” how many have morphed into fast friends? Surely more than we two, but it’s rare in my experience.

I’d been jobless for 6 months when Bill, knowing that my health coverage was about to run out, gallantly proposed. Although we’d decided from the start not to marry - having been burned before - I accepted, not only for the insurance but because we were rock-solid certain that we were the loves of each other’s lives. As Bill said to Frank, his best friend since childhood, “After all, it’s not as if I don’t love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her.”

David’s happiness for both of us was clouded only by his lack of a partner.

Fast forward a year, after countless job interviews. Scrolling the listings, I saw that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Virgin Islands Daily News needed an editor.

“Hey, wanna move to St. Thomas?” I called out to Bill.

“You bet! Go for it!” he yelled back, and the wheels began to spin. No doubt in Bill’s mind: All he wanted was to fish in the sun, semiretired, while copywriting for the Daily News. The day we accepted our new jobs, we celebrated our first anniversary. The next day, we flew home and prepared to report for work in 8 weeks.

David was against the move, not only because we’d be so far away but because he felt that, as a city girl with Brooklyn in her bones, I wouldn’t thrive there.

Bill and I agreed we’d get full physicals before moving to an island with decent doctors but nearly nonexistent hospital care. Bill procrastinated and had his exam just 3 weeks before we were to use our one-way tickets. Five days later, his specialist diagnosed stage IV lung cancer.

The Caribbean was no longer in our future.

It was at this point that David stepped up to the plate. Bill had no family, only friends from work and Frank. But it was David who visited at least weekly (especially for Sunday baseball games). My family and our friends dropped by once in a while, but David was the most constant companion Bill had other than me, and they grew to love each other. They even managed to bridge the gap of rooting for rival teams, the Red Sox and the Mets.

On a September afternoon 4½ months after his diagnosis, Bill died while I was out. The only comfort was the doctor’s assurance that it had been instant and painless, a sort of explosion that couldn’t have been prevented even if he had been in the hospital.

After 911, my first call was to David. He was the first by my side as I stood, in shock, answering questions from the emergency personnel who swarmed in. He held me, comforted me, cried with me. We loved and mourned Bill together in a moment more intimate than we’d ever shared as spouses.

Nearly 2 years later, I met Don, and it was David whose thumbs-up I sought.

That’s about when David met his darling Jodi. They came to our wedding reception, delighted to celebrate with us, and we hope someday to dance at theirs.

Inevitably, David and I see each other less often now. But nary a week goes by that we don’t e-mail or phone. We’re still the closest of friends; I still bear his name. We have each other’s backs and always will.

Chances are, we’ll be rocking beside each other on the nursing-home porch. Madonna, eat your heart out!

A freelance writer and editor in Arlington, Virginia, Anne Goodfriend marvels at how fortunate she is to have loved and been loved by the brave, kind men who have shared her life.

In the Name of Love

A gal by any other name smells as sweet, but some choose to remain the same. This primer on surnames IDs the basics.

by Patricia J. Lasher

Elizabeth Taylor is smart when it comes to the name business. This busy navigator on the sea of matrimony could have changed from Elizabeth Taylor, to Hilton, to Wilding, to Todd, to Fisher, to Burton (twice), to Warner, then Fortensky. But, she started with Taylor and kept it. Cher, Madonna, and Rihanna took it even one step further.

In the English tradition-primogeniture, patriarchy, the Empire, and all that - a woman took her maiden name from her father and traded it for her husband’s (from his father) upon marriage. In civil law countries - Spain and France, to name just two - married women officially keep their maiden names, but take the husband’s name for social purposes. Estimates vary, though, about the number of married American women who take their husband’s name, but most researchers agree that this practice has declined steadily in the past 15 years.

Laws and statutes regarding changing names are specific to individual states. Maryland permits hyphenation of both spouses’ names - or just about any name to be taken so long as there’s no fraud by the parties and no effort to take advantage of a celebrity. (Which means Jolie-Pitt may not be granted by the court.) Massachusetts, New York, and a handful of states permit the wife’s name to be taken by the groom upon marriage, but there has been no groundswell for this right elsewhere. Iowa permits the traditional adoption of the husband’s name, but also the husband to adopt the wife’s; or, both may change to a totally different new name. So Ms. Smith and Mr. Jones might combine to become the Smines or the Joiths, or, more likely, the Johnsons. This practice ensures that subsequent children and the parents will have the same name, while guaranteeing that college fundraising offices will rarely track down the couple.

When divorce rears its head, states generally permit the court that issues the divorce decree to restore a prior name to a divorcing female litigant given proper request to that court. The divorce decree will spell out the resulting surname and can be used as proof of the name change (for instance, “Ms. Fortensky’s surname is restored to Taylor.”) Most will permit any prior name to be restored. Thus, a woman may return to the last name of a prior spouse with whom she bore children or to her maiden name, if she chooses. And no, the first ex-husband has no right to object, much to the chagrin of the current missus. Usually no additional fee is involved with a change of name if done during the divorce proceeding.

Some women keep a prior name to avoid embarrassing combinations of names and a late-night mention by Jay Leno. A law school friend of mine kept her first husband’s name into her second marriage because she didn’t want to be known as “Holly Hooker.”

Those, however, who decide - after the divorce is final - to restore a prior name must file a new lawsuit, meaning they’ll incur additional fees and costs. Seeking an altogether new name usually results in a search of police records plus testimony that the change is not an attempt to defraud creditors or to avoid law enforcement.

Many women who chose in a first marriage to retain maiden names simply continue with that practice into second, third, and well, additional marriages (see Elizabeth Taylor). She’s following a bright historical path: The right for American women to keep surnames was vigorously promoted by suffragette Lucy Stone in the mid-1800s; for years thereafter, such renegade women were called “Lucy Stoners” in her honor.

Other women who have achieved professional status and reputation under a name may not want to lose the public recognition associated with it; those with medical degrees, law licenses, and Pulitzer Prizes attached will likely retain the previous moniker, regardless of marital pressure. Many a bride continues to use her name in business matters and her husband’s in social situations. Under the common law, this practice works so long as there is no intent to defraud others.

For a few, inertia is simply the moving force in life. The headache of notifying all the necessary organizations can be so overwhelming that many simply ignore the matter. It may take the expiration of a driver’s license, the arrival of new voter registration forms, or the birth of a child to provoke a decision to make a new name election.

In other words, whatever works…works.

When remarriage does result in a name change, the first step is to secure a new Social Security card, which will have the old number, new name. (See instructions and form SS-5.) A marriage certificate is acceptable evidence for a change of name. In the event of divorce or annulment, the Social Security Administration requires two additional original documents, one of which may be expired, with identifying information and/or photographs.

When it comes to a passport change of name, the government requires acceptable evidence of the name change: marriage certificate, divorce decree, or court order for changing the name, along with the passport to be replaced. (For further details on passport changes, see www.travel.state.gov/passport/get/correcting/correcting_2654.html.)

The passport or Social Security card only starts the process. Changes in myriad other documents can be time-consuming and may include the driver’s license, auto registration, insurance, investments and brokerage accounts, credit cards, utility bills, medical records, voter registration, professional licensing boards, wills, trusts, real property records, post office, membership organizations, and children’s schools. Each change is a separate endeavor and may come with a fee; unfortunately, there’s no “one step changes all.”

A smart travel agent I know reminds the wedding couple, as they book flights for the perfect honeymoon, that even if the bride is trading “Ms.” for “Mrs.,” the ticketed passenger must have photo identification in the name of the traveler. That’s unlikely unless the honeymoon is delayed.

Children present a whole separate challenge. Although remarriage gives a spouse the right-and opportunity-to change surnames, only a court with jurisdiction can confer a permanent change to a child’s name. Most courts require the consent of all living parents and, lacking agreement, will look at the best interest of the child, along with factors such as the strength of the relationship of the child with each parent, the need of a child to identify with a family unit, and the length of time the father’s name has been used. Some states require a child’s consent, if age appropriate, before the minor’s name can be changed. Even when a child prefers to use a stepparent’s name, or other children in the family bear a different surname, it is difficult to convince a court to change the name of a child when a living parent is contesting that change.

With regrets to Mr. Shakespeare’s “What’s in a name?” we say, evidently to the world at large: “Quite a lot!”

A former family court associate judge in Houston, Texas, Patricia Lasher has specialized in family law for more than 20 years, and written along the way. With her own remarriage, she now divides her time between Baltimore, Maryland, and Houston.

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