How to change your name after divorce
DIVORCED women who wish to revert to their maiden names can do so through a deed poll.
A deed poll is a drafted document that enables you to abandon a name or names and assume another of your choice.
A deed poll provides legal documentary evidence to everyone you have dealings with that they must change their records without question.
While a married woman can automatically change her name to her husband’s after marriage without issue, when she wants to revert to her maiden name, many institutions require that she do a deed poll.
This is because when she changes her name in marriage, it then permanently becomes her identity by adoption and this can only be changed legally.
All Government agencies and private concerns require a formal change by deed poll. The raison d’etre is that once the woman adopted and used the ‘married’ name, then that became her true and legal identity.
A deed poll is processed at the Registrar General’s Department.
