His Point of View

Why would you want to keep his last name?

by on Apr.10, 2010, under Dating and Relationships, My Thoughts

Why is it that some ladies want to keep their ex-husband’s last name after a divorce?  This is something that I do not understand.  If you no longer want to be with that man, why would you want to keep his name attached to yours?  Today I watched two television shows starring woman who are divorced and I spoke to a woman that I know personally who all are divorced yet have kept their ex-husband’s last name.  I have heard a couple of arguments of why a woman would want to do such a thing including: to have the same last name as her children and to maintain her name recognition (in the case of celebrities or well know business women).  I don’t think that either of those are really valid reasons to keep the name of a person you no longer wish to share your life with.  I think that these women simply do not want to endure administrative hassle of changing their name, or they are purposely attempting to keep a link to their ex-husband for some reason (e.g. spite, residual emotional feelings, marketplace name recognition, etc.) If you are attempting to keep the same last name as your children, what happens when you re-marry?  At some point these women are likely to have a different last name than their children, I do not know of any man who would be satisfied if his wife kept her former husband’s last name.   For the celebrity or successful women who want to maintain name recognition, that says to me that your success is based on your ex-husband’s name recognition.  If you are as successful as you think you are, you should be able to continue to build your business with a name that is all your own.

I know of cases where women have kept their ex-husband’s last name even though he was totally against it, and a few men I know of have attempted to get the courts to force the ex-wife to change her name.  In some cases it seems like women do this as a last means to rub salt in the man’s wound after a divorce.  If you have no children and you have no significant name recognition, then it must be spite which causes some women to fight to keep their ex-husband’s last name.

I know that some men could not care less what happens after a divorce.  But I do think that most men care about a few things during a divorce:

1. the kids

2. the amount of money/property she will get

3. his last name

What are your thoughts on the topic?

:,

  • creolepeach

    I think may women do it for their children, at least that's the reason they use. To me, the underlying reason for that is not wanting some self-inflicted shame with not being with the child's father. I think the larger reason is not wanting to go through the work. I know someone that waited simply because of the headache that comes with changing license, social security card, every account you even think ever had. It's a pain to a higher degree of moving and having to change addresses. I also know someone that kept the name even when the man remarried. That was mind blowing to me.

  • Lady J

    I did it for my child trust and believe…..but on the flipside if I remarry it will be happily dorpped….I was stuck on sill thinking I need to keep it forever but i don't……but as divorced ex wife that beared the child while we were together I have that right and thank God the courts back it……My child knows me as Lena Jenkins and that is important to the both of us….if I remarry I will explain to her why I kept it as a single mom and dropping it as a new wife to my new husband……

  • Ladyj817

    and if I didn't have a child I would have gladly dropped the married name I see no purpose outside of the child to keep it……

  • Ladyj817

    both of those lady j post are mine I had to registered fyi….lol

  • gypsysgirl

    i totally agree with this article. I have been with my boyfriend for over a few years now. He has an ex wife who always seem to brag to him (after their divorce) she had happily moved on and immediately went on to wed another man. My boyfriend and her thankfully share no kids together. At the time ( early in our relationship) they claimed to remain amicable friends but i never trusted her, she would always msg my boyfriend and try to remain in touch with him, inviting him to dinner, taking half custody of his dog, sending him facebook msg ,xmas cards and bday wishes…(yes this became an awkward issue) We came to the conclusion that he immediately cut all ties with her. After a few months now she hasn’t made any contact but i have seen her on facebook and her full name on there is a hyphenated piece of jargon that i can make no sense of. It includes her name with middle name, maiden surname, new husbands surname and ex husbands surname, you would think maybe she wants people to be able to find her?…Pff hardly , she is hidden on all searches and you cant find her, send her a msg or make contact with her at all. Using all those names makes me really envious but i know that its pure spite. Great article!

  • Dogster302

    I am 31 years old, divorced for 5 yrs now. I still have my ex husbands last name. We have no children together. We have not spoken in 5 years. I have a fiance. I will glady change the name when I remarry one day. My reasons for keeping the name are:
    My maiden name is European very long, hard to pronounce (10 letters). I am from a family who I would rather not have the same last name as them. I am the only one in the family to have gone to college & university & do not want to associate my professional life with them. I have established a career with my ex’s last name & want to keep it. My ex’s last name is a nice last name. I was married for 5 years. I know that my ex doesn’t care that I have kept his name. When we split I told him I was going to and that I would change it if I remarry. He could care less. I know that it did not bother him. If my maiden name was one that could be pronounced & I was from a family that I was proud of I would have changed it back. I could care less what anyone thinks of my reasons. It’s my name, my identity. My comment to women who have BF’s with an ex wife that keep the name is get over your insecurities. You choose to be in a realationship with a divorced man. He is with you not with the ex wife. Most of the people I work with do not even know that I was married before, if I were to change my name I would have to go thru the 20 questions from the 160 staff that I work with. It’s not their business. I don’t want to answer the questions.

  • mrggfep

    This is definitely an interesting response, but for several reasons beyond the original topic. I read your response a couple of times and I understand the concept of being ashamed of one’s family, but not to this extent. I mean is there no one you actually like in your family? You bring up another point, your last name identifies where you are from geographically, most people take pride in that, but you seem to find it annoying to have a name that has a foreign origin. It seems to me that you are ashamed of a lot of things in your past including your family, your family’s homeland, and the fact that you were divorced… I mean you are using some other family’s name but you don’t even allow people to know that you have been married. You like your ex’s last name but you don’t like to expose the fact that you were once married to him?
    Please excuse the tone I do not intend to offend you or sound overly harsh… I just find your response to contain a lot of things that signal other issues beyond the original topic and none of those issues came to mind while I was composing this post.

  • Guest

    As far as her response goes, I understand what she means to an extent. My parents are still married but I’m not sure, if my mom had ever gotten a divorce, that she would have gone back to her maiden name. Her family was well known in the small town that she worked in(she did not grow up there) but before she was married people would associate her with my grandfather’s family. They were a family of hellraisers…family trying to kill each other literally and in one case succeeding, illegitimate kids who took the names of their married fathers, just alot of mess. My mom was thrilled to get rid of her name…maybe it wouldn’t have been that way if she hadn’t worked in this town where everyone thought they knew her background.

    And I’m not posting this with my name because I also do not want the world knowing the pieces of my family background that I mentioned here so I can totally understand my mom’s thinking. Its not something that random people need to know about you just because they know your last name.

    Anyhow, people have their reasons for keeping a last name and even if its just because they don’t want to go through the administrative hassle then what difference does it make? It really is just a name in my view. If I ever divorced, I’d likely keep the name until I remarried, not out of some attempt to spite or hang onto my ex-husband, but that is part of my history too and personally I wouldn’t want to deal with the administrative hassle either.

    I think most men may have a different view of the significance of their last name than a woman might. I love my family but I’m just not so attached to the name…possibly because a woman comes up expecting to change her name at least once in her life there just isn’t the same attachment. Now, if it meant that much to my ex-husband that I don’t have his name anymore then I don’t think I would fight over it…it isn’t that important for something that, in my opinon, is just a name and not that significant to me.

  • Anonymous

    My reaction was primarily that of “wow” her response (and yours) was something completely out of the realm of reasons I have ever heard for not wanting to let go of a name. I see your point, and I respect your feelings on the matter, but I don’t understand how its that much of a problem if you have relocated a fair distance from your family’s geographic location. Unless you do remove yourself from the region you will always be known as a part of that clan… and if you do move far enough away you should rarely, if ever run into anyone who knows your family’s story. If your family is known for raising hell in southwest Ohio, and you now live in Kansas or Texas for example, you should not have anything to worry about, other than the rare occasion you run into someone from your hometown, and even then they can still identify you. I am glad you chimed in, the responses to this post are interesting… now if I could only get people to reply here instead of Twitter and Facebook…LoL

  • Souky

    I think you are in left field. Not sure what your spiritual and religious practices are, but regardless of the courts, in the eyes of God, the couple is still married until he or she remarries. Keeping his last name has nothing to do with be unable to let him go. Keeping his last name is easier in terms of administration, but at the end of the day it is a right that the man has no right over. Can she have her figure back from bearing his children? Get a grip partner! 

  • Anonymous

    Welp, here we go….
    First of all I was not taking the religious road, but since we are going there…I don’t see the part where the bible says you can keep the ex-husband’s last name until you re-marry. Nor do I see the part that says you are still married in the eyes of God until you re-marry. I DO see the part that says once you are married you are married until death. Further the bible seems to be pretty clear that Divorce is bad, very bad… and remarrying after divorce is pretty much a sin unless your spouse died or cheated on you. The bible is clear that Divorce is acceptable if your spouse cheats… and the Bible is clear that remarriage is fine if your spouse died and you remarry a person who has never been married. The controversy is in whether remarriage is acceptable if you divorced due to cheating. Some parts of the bible say that death is the only reason to remarry, and some parts of the bible say that remarriage after a divorce due to cheating is not acceptable, while other parts of the bible permit it. I doubt that either of us are qualified to determine which part of the Bible applies to our lives in 2011.

    1 Corinthians 7:10-14 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

    So what part of that says re-marriage (to another man) is an option?
    And I will throw these in for good measure.

    Mark 10:11-12 [Jesus] answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

    Luke 16:18 Jesus is quoted again, saying, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

    Romans 7:2-3 The apostle Paul taught that “…by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.”
    Matthew 5:31-32 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”
    Deuteronomy 24:1-4, KJV When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

    Let’s step back for a second…Really religion is not a part of this discussion, as our society is not monotheistic. The US is composed of Christians, Athiests, Muslims, Hindu, etc, etc…. Our court system does not handle cases according to your belief system…Our legal system, although based on Christian beliefs does not follow the principles of the bible to the letter. If that were the case If we are going to have this debate based on biblical teachings then its a whole lot of things we would have talk about before we get to “why would she keep er ex’s last name.” Just because you don’t know my religious beliefs and because citizens of the US have many varied beliefs, and because that the Bible is pretty clear that the reasons for a valid divorce are extremely few, let’s ignore religion and address your other points.

    Your next point “but at the end of the day it is a right that the man has no right over”… Really? A right that the man has no right over??? Really? C’mon did you really type that?

    And finally your point about getting her figure back after bearing his children… Well lemme see, I thought “they” had children… Unless she was raped she decided to participate in the activities that lead to bearing children. So if she did not want to ruin her figure either she needed to not be sexually active without protection… Or wait a minute… actually she can get her figure back after having children… its called diet and exercise… its called discipline and hard work. If you think that women can’t get their figure back after child birth you really have the mentality of a lazy, slovenly human being who enjoys being the victim. You have to take responsibility foor your own life and your physical body. Nobody else ate that Twinkie… you did, you have to either learn to say no to the Twinkie, or run around the block a few times to burn off those calories. If a person can’t say no, and on top of that they are lazy that person will never get their figure back… but it is 100% that person’s fault, not the man who helped them to become pregnant. So this is not even a legit topic for discussion.

    So to sum it up basically you said men have a Right to control who keeps their last name, although we should not have that right… and you said that if A woman can get her figure back then men should get to keep control over their name… and that has been proven to be possible… so what exactly do I need to get a grip on? It looks like you pretty much agree with everything I said… well except for the religous part, which I don’t think you have a clear understanding of yourself…

    Soooo…. I’ll be here let me know what you think when you re-group.
    P.S. its nothing personal… I don’t know who you are,

  • Anonymous

    I love this post!! 
    Sorry, I know I am not adding anything to the discussion but I had to comment because I really love your reply.

  • Cherylwhite5460

    If she is no longer married to him it is pathetic to want to keep his last name, the new wife does nt want to be associated with an ex-wife.

  • Schoolgirlb

    Only a FKN LOSER would keep her exes last name…POINT BLANK!! Get your own identity (or in this case, RECLAIM ur old one) and hop off!! I’m sooooo glad men dont take womens names in marraige b/c I think I’d want to DIE if some man that I was no longer interested in, tried to continue running around claiming my family name…I mean, Who the fk would want to  keep ANY ties with a person they no longer share a life with?? Obviously there your ex for a reason, whether u did them wrong or they did u wrong, WHY would u WANT to be associated with a failed marraige and name of a person your obviously not compatible with??? Nobody normal would do some bs like this with a regular ex so why is it okay to do it to an ex husband?? Can we say: OUT OF PURE DESPERATION?!?! These women use kids and career and whatever other excuse they can think of to cling on to the bitter end and whats worse is that the law recognizes this form as patheticisim as a legit reason and allows the women to choose if she wants the name and to basically legally STALK an ex and stay associated with a person who wants no association whatsoever… I’m being a bit harsh, but why should I be polite and politically correct when what these thirsty ass losers is doing, IS SO WRONG?!?! UGHHHHHH!!! IJS

  • 13ensmith

    I’m dating a girl who is a divorcee. I’ve never been married. When I see that name, I see him. I see it just the same as if she were still wearing a wedding band. When I visit with her family, I have to bite my tongue seeing three names at the table. But she’s indifferent on the matter. I’m at a loss on how to handle it. 

  • ham

    My wife still has my last name. And it bothers me. I send her e-mail, text messages and even written her letters to ask why. But I get no response. It’s a simple question…Why?

  • mrggfep

    Great comments, but I think we need more divorced women to chime in…LoL, best wishes to all those on the short end of this stick.

  • Mister

    I was married, had a child then we divorced 1 year later. My ex still has my last name because she didn’t want to bother with paper work and says that people may know she’s mother of our child. Sounds logical…but its pretty insecure and lazy on her part. There are so many happy families out there that couples are not married and have children and the children have the fathers last names only. So there is no excuse for former married women to use the excuse of ” Keeping exes last name for the sake of the child.”  And when I do remarry someday and have another child, my children should be the only ones who has the right to keep their last name. Not the husband or wife.

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