Woman Refuses To Drop Ex-Husband's Last Name After He & His Fiancé Claim It's 'Weird' She Still Has It
She says it's too complicated to change it.
Hannah Nelson / Pexels The decision on whether or not to change your last name after divorce can be complicated.
If there are kids involved, it’s even more difficult because most divorcees want to share the same surname as their children.
One woman sought advice on the subreddit, AITA (Am-I-The-A—hole) after her fiancé asked her to drop her ex-husband’s last name and she refused.
The Redditor starts by sharing that she and her former spouse “Tony” split two years ago after 26 years of marriage. They share four children.
She recalls how she hyphenated her last name to add her ex’s due to “social pressure” and “stupidity.”
She also details the cumbersome name change process like updating her driver’s license, passport, credit cards, and voter registration.
After her divorce, she felt it was easier to keep her ex's last name.
The mother of four tells readers that her marriage ended amicably with her husband coming out as a gay man.
She shared an update on her ex’s relationship status, writing, “Tony is currently engaged to a guy and they are going to get married in the next year.”
Since divorcing, the poster has never sought to go back to her maiden name because of all of the red tape she would have to go through.
The woman’s last name had not been a concern until her son recently decided to take a vacation and asked for her identification.
The planning went off without a hitch until the amicable ex attended her grandson’s party a few days later. Tony and his fiancé were also in attendance.
The former couple’s adult son joked that he was surprised to learn his mother was still carrying his father’s last name two years after the divorce.
The Redditor took it all in jest and relays, “I laughed, saying that I was too lazy to rush to change everything that has this name on it.”
This prompted her ex-husband to ask if she really still had his last name and suggested that him being engaged to someone else was a good time for her to drop his family name.
After Tony insisted it was weird of her to the woman to keep the name she commented, “Unless you can go in my place, spend hours and hours in lines, pay hundreds for it, I won't do it in the near future.”
She thought the issue was over.
The unbothered woman says that from there, Tony dropped the conversation and the party continued as planned.
But surprisingly, she tells other Redditors, “Later, he called me and said I was acting weird and a jerk by refusing to change the name, which he said was uncomfortable.”
To clarify, the baffled former bride asserts, “I don't intend to never change, I just don't want to go through it right now.”
She asked her son for his input, and he said he understood both sides of the situation so she has come to Reddit to get some unbiased input.
Commenters offered some creative solutions.
The first comment, upvoted over 23,000 times, made an interesting suggestion after voting the woman NTA (not the a—hole).
They said, “If having his ex share a last name with him bothers him that much, then maybe he should take his fiancé's name after they marry.”
One person focused on the societal expectations placed on women, saying, “I hate that logic that implies that women never get to own our own surnames.”
“The people pressuring us to change our names on marriage say that our birth-surnames are really our father's names, so it should be no big deal to take our husband's name.”
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington, and author of seven books. She covers lifestyle and entertainment and news, as well as navigating the workplace and social issues.