Help! i Can't Decide on What i Should do for my Last Name!

There are no complications. Your name is your name.

I’m the last person in my family to have my last name as well, but my friend brought up a good point: the name is dying out even if I keep my maiden name. If we have children, they’ll take my fiancé’s last name. So that helped sway me to change my name to my fiancé’s last name. I also just like the thought of us having the same last name. I don’t have much advice, just thought I’d offer this perspective.

There's no complications if you don't change it, nothing changes. If you do change it you have to change everything. You should look up if your state allows you to change it later, my friend changed hers over a year later.

As it seems important to you, I believe you should keep your name. The hyphen seems like a nice option too. One thing to know is that switching either of your names is so much easier at the wedding on the marriage certificate than through the hassle of the courts, at least in my state.

I’m keeping mine, mostly for professional reasons. There’s no complications to keeping your name and you can change it later if you decide to go that direction.

I kept mine, back in 1977. The only complication I've ever faced was one time when we were returning to the country, and there was one passport line for A to M, and one for N to Z. His name was in N to Z, and mine was in A to M. Given that we were married for 19 years, that's not a lot of complications.

And there is no law that says the children need to have his name. Given that you're the last one with your name, and he isn't the last one with his, it would make more sense to have the children have your name.

As far as I'm concerned, hyphenation is the worst of both worlds, unless he is also hyphenating. Otherwise, you end up going through all the hassle of changing your name, and still don't end up with the same one as him. Plus, a lot of people are likely to use only one of the two names, which means you may end up with different names in different places. I've seen people having difficulties with being allowed to vote, troubles with tax returns, etc., when that happens.

View Quoted Comment Thankfully, we aren’t having children, so there is no need to worry about their names. I’m thinking of not doing anything until after I get my tax return for 2019. Based on our incomes, I have heard it is best to file separately.

View Quoted Comment

The decision on whether to keep your name is totally separate from the decision whether to file your taxes separately. Here's a copy of the Form 1040:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf

As you can see, even if you file a joint return, they ask for the first and last name of each of you separately.

The only thing to be careful of is that the name on your Forms W-2, 1099, etc. is the same as the name on your tax return. Where people get into trouble is if they have Jane Smith on one, Jane Jones on another, and Jane Smith-Jones on a third. As long as you're consistent, you won't have trouble.