Originally Posted by
Parachute07
Sorry -- I hadn't looked back at this thread in a while. To answer you, MSP, the marriage certificate in New York State shows both maiden name and "new surname". When filling out the paperwork (in New York State), it asked if you intend to change your surname. She did intend that, and so the marriage certificate shows her "Premarriage Surname" and "New Surname" (with the words "if applicable" in parenthesis). She has not legally changed her surname from the "premarriage" name and only uses my last name on things like Facebook.
At any rate, I'm still not sure how to go about Global Entry with this.....so I suppose we'll have to wait until we are about to have children and will stop traveling for a bit to get this figured out :-).
Depending your state, that new surname on a completed and filed marriage license is a legal name change (and it's certainly considered a new legal name by the Passport Office), even if she hasn't updated her passport or drivers license. If it were me, I'd either update my docs to the legal name or change it back.
My wife had the opposite problem, we got married in a state that only shows the applicants names on the license and not the post marriage name. This was such a problem with the Passport Office that my wife went though the standalone name change process so she could get a court order that would satisfy them.