British Citizenship and wife's married/maiden name change..

[CharlieB]

Afternoon,

Been a while since I've been on this forum, but I have a question about applying for UK citizenship and the name change process. My wife has ILR and we are about to apply for citizenship before the ESOL changes come into effect. My wife has had ILR for roughly a year, has been resident in the UK since April 2008 and was physically in the UK three years before the date we are sending in the application. Hopefully, everything should be fine. My only issue is that all the applications for visa's and leave to remain have been done in my wife's maiden name. This means her UK ILR and residence card is in her maiden name as is her Thai passport.

As part of this citizenship application I think we should really get the ball rolling on changing things over to her married name. Now, my plan is as follows:

1) Send in UK Citizenship application, putting her married name in 1.5 Surname/Family Name. Put her full name at birth in 1.7 and an explanation for the name difference being that we wish the certificate to be issued in her married name on page 15.

2) Once the above application has been passed and we have the necessary certificate we plan on popping in to the Thai Embassy in London with our marriage certificate & passports to change the name on her Thai passport.

3) Apply for UK passport in married name. (Do we need to send in her Biometric Residence Card as part of this application?)

4) Apply to Home Office to have UK residence card changed to reflect married name. We're doing this bit last as the Home Office site states that you need to apply within 3 months of a reason for requiring a replacement. As it's several years since we married, we'll have to base the name change on her change of name or nationality on her passport(s).

Has anyone else recently done any, or all of the above name changes? Does my plan look ok and in the right order?

Just trying to sense check things really before we do the citizenship application so that we don't make a mistake.

Thanks

CB

[7by7]

It is not illegal for anyone in the UK to use two or more names, as long as there is no intention to deceive or other criminal intent.

So, she can submit her naturalisation application in her married name; even though her Thai passport and resident permit are in her maiden name. Your marriage certificate provides the link.

1) Fine, no problem.

2) Don't need her British naturalisation certificate to change the name in her Thai passport; just the marriage certificate. So can do this anytime.

3) No.

4) Once she is a British citizen she doesn't need her biometric resident permit anymore, so why bother with this?

[CharlieB]

It is not illegal for anyone in the UK to use two or more names, as long as there is no intention to deceive or other criminal intent.

So, she can submit her naturalisation application in her married name; even though her Thai passport and resident permit are in her maiden name. Your marriage certificate provides the link.

1) Fine, no problem.

2) Don't need her British naturalisation certificate to change the name in her Thai passport; just the marriage certificate. So can do this anytime.

3) No.

4) Once she is a British citizen she doesn't need her biometric resident permit anymore, so why bother with this?

Thanks for the reply 7by7. Ha ha, yeah, excellent point on number 4. Completely forgot that she would be an UK citizen by this stage! Thanks for the reminder.

[sanook2me]

We have just submitted Citizenship documents and used the local council checking service so I have first hand experience about the name thing.

All of my Thai wifes documents are in her maiden name too as it appears on her Thai passport...then the bank here would only let her open a joint account with me and it had to be from her

passport name etc....

This continued all through the 3 years of living here before applying for citizenship...

The lady at the checking service asked about the surname as it is the most common question.

Whichever surname you apply for citizenship in will be the lawful surname so you can use your surname as in Mr and Mrs Bloggs...

So when you apply for her UK passport it will be in the same name as you applied for citizenship which will be your surname.

What the lady suggested we do was put my Thai wifes surname as her middle name on the application. The lady said alot of nationalities do this as it covers most bases keeping the maiden name and having the new surname.

This worked for us.

Hope it makes sense.

[RAZZELL]

As above.

Wife had all documents in maiden name, at NCS Registar asked us what name did we want on the citizenship certificate as this is the one that will go on the passport...chose my surname.

RAZZ

[CharlieB]

Just thought I would let everyone know that my Mrs received her letter yesterday confirming that she has been awarded UK citizenship and should receive an invite to a ceremony in the next 2 weeks.

This was all slightly delayed by me sending credit card details for payment and the useless Nationwide refusing the Home Office payment of the fee for possible fraud reasons. Had to resend a cheque, luckily my bank honoured it. Lol

Edited December 21, 2013 by CharlieB

[sanook2me]

Well done mate...

My Mrs becomes British next month..

3 expensive and stressful years, <snip>

Happy days..

Edited December 22, 2013 by theoldgit
Off topic, and untrue remark removed.

[CharlieB]

Just thought I'd post an update. 2 weeks ago Mrs CharlieB and myself popped down to Kingston town hall where she went through her citizenship ceremony.

Slight warning to others that if you have been going through the visa/residency process with your wife using her maiden name, make sure you take your marriage certificate or something with her married name on. Despite the certificate having her maiden and married names on it and the letter from the home office with both names on and her having her Thai passport, they were so anal about her having some form of ID with her married name on it that they almost stopped us being able to take part. They satisfied themselves with asking her a few questions about her DoB, birth place etc.

Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand