Legally changing your name in Massachusetts just got quicker and cheaper. The process is also safer, advocates and lawmakers argue.
Gov. Maura Healey signed a routine state close-out budget Tuesday that will make such court proceedings more private: People who are changing their names in Massachusetts will no longer have to print a public notice in a local newspaper, effective immediately, and the court records will be confidential.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ people and survivors of domestic violence are celebrating the win as a bright spot in a difficult national landscape, especially for transgender people.
“We’re living in a time where the federal government is seeking the next group to scapegoat, and they have not been shy about seeking opportunities to scapegoat and harm the transgender community,” said state Rep. Jack Lewis, a Framingham Democrat who sponsored the measure. “The idea that our state law would require that folks who are going through a legal name change would have to have that information be published — for anyone to find and read — we firmly believe puts people in a vulnerable place.”
Kelsey R. Grunstra, deputy director with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, said this change was “something that we heard from our community that this was a thing that really needed to be changed to make it feel safer for people in Massachusetts to legally update their name.”
Part of that safety concern has to do with increased access to information. State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, a Northampton Democrat and one of the bill’s original sponsors, said the risks are greater because information is much more accessible than it used to be.
“In this day and age, publishing something in the newspaper also means it going online, right?” Sabadosa said. “Those records can be scrubbed and fed into websites with AI in really easy ways.”
The change was also backed by organizations like Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.
“It ensures that confidentiality that is really necessary for survivors to basically be able to get away from an abusive situation or a violent situation and really get their life back,” said Ren Liu, who works for the coalition.
People had to pay to place these notices, too — up to $125 in some newspapers — so the new rules will save them money in an already expensive process. Grunstra said changing your name and getting new identification can overall cost $300 to $500, or even as high as $1,000 in rare cases.
Even in situations where a name change isn’t sensitive, removing the publication step takes out one piece of the bureaucratic process.
Massachusetts resident Randi Mariana Leigh has been using that name for over 30 years, turning her middle name into her last name after a divorce.
“I didn’t want my ex-husband’s name — and I was pissed at my dad, so I didn’t want my dad’s last name,” she explained to GBH News.
She never went through the full legal process — at the time, she lived in California, which has a common-law way of recognizing people’s preferred names.
But now that she’s on the East Coast, she decided to go through Massachusetts’ legal process to get her name on her government identification. Asked specifically about the publication requirement, Leigh was nonchalant.
“It’s no big deal to me,” she said. “It just makes the process longer, that’s all.”
Thousands of people go to court to change their name every year in Massachusetts courts. Statistics from the trial court’s research department show more than 6,200 requests were filed in the last fiscal year.
In just the past two weeks, public records show dozens of these notices have been published in Massachusetts newspapers. Court filings show many personal reasons why people wanted their name changed: reclaiming a maiden name after divorce, correcting the spelling of a family name, or just “family preference.”
GLAD Law, an LGBTQ+ civil rights legal group, has been running a pro bono name change clinic since 2016 and supported hundreds of people in the process.
“The name change process had become really burdensome, expensive, slow and stressful for pretty much everyone, but particularly for transgender and nonbinary people,” said Polly Crozier, GLAD Law’s director of family advocacy. “Particularly for transgender people, nonbinary people, people who might be survivors of domestic violence, publishing notice in a newspaper really feels kind of scary and invasive.”
Crozier says anyone who runs into a problem should contact her organization.
