Divorce, Marriage and Name Change

It is not hard to change your name when you get married because it is the traditional way of things so getting new id is not hard at all if you decide to do that and take a marriage license with you. Your child is another issue. Unless the biological father signs off on a name change of the minor I don't believe it is possible until she is 18 and can do it herself.
I know that if you want to change your name in Porter Co IN you need to pay a fee and do some paperwork, then put an ad in the paper to give people a chance to protest the change. If nobody objects to your change, you are granted the name change. This might work for a child, but I don't know. I only know this because my husband was going to take my maiden name as a middle name (like our children) to have a special family name thing. But this was all too much hassle he said.
Oh, and don't know if you remember the OC but the one women on there had like 3 last names from getting divorced and remarried. Now it is not strange at all to have different names in a family.

If you get married in the future you would change your name just as you did when you first got married, you know the typical drivers license, social security, etc. As for your child: first her biological father would have to give consent.... then you should make sure this is something she would be o.k. with (I would never allow my stepfather to adopt me) & at her age she may not like the idea as most kids dont like their mom/dad to re-marry. And most of all make sure the new husband is going to be around for the long haul otherwise if you get divorced that creates a whole new set of problems. Most people who get re-married just take their husbands last name & you will just have a different last name than your daughter, this is very common

In the state of Illinois to have your daughter adopted by a step parent her father would either have to sign a document terminating his parental rights or he would have to be found unfit and the courts would have to terminate his parental rights. The second one is hard to do if the parent is around and active in the childs life. Also these days it is not big deal for the parent and child to not have the same last name.

Sorry one more thing. You and your future spouse would need to be married before he could adopt her.

If you ever got married again, you could hyphen you new last name as well maiden name-new married name.Or just completely change it to the new name, dropping the maiden name. you would have to have a copy of your marriage certificate and go to thr DMV, get your liscense changed over. Then go to all the other places, social security office, inform your credit cards or utility bills, etc. Your daughter would keep her last name as is, unless the stepfather adopted her, but you would need permission to do that from her father.

As you know you have several options. My mom changed her name when she remarried and we had different last names. I called my stepfather "dad" when I was ready. The different last name thing was not a huge deal even though there were very few kids with divorced parents in my school. Every once in awhile a teacher/administrator/kid would note that our names were different. A brief explanation took care of it and we never noticed a "stigma". Changing your name is relatively easy (see previous poster), changing your daughter's would be more difficult. As the previous poster mentioned, you would have to go through the adoption process and permission from the father would most likely be necessary. I would say that it is important not to push adoption on either your child or "new husband". I think it's something that would come about naturally as their relationship builds.

That's very touchy! I had the same situation and I chose to change my last name - which I don't regret that, but I chose to leave my son's name as is.

Best choice ever! Whether your child's father has a relationship with her or not, she deserves to at least have that part of him. If something happens and you and the new husband don't work out, then you'll have the headache of explaining to your child why her name is changing again! (...way too much for a child to process)

Also, if her father pays child support, you would have to get permission and you don't want to cut off any support that you might receive - even if the new husband could/would be a better provider - that's money you can sock away for her in the future!

Believe me, I've learned this lesson!
Hope this helps!