When I transitioned back in 2007 I had a number of loans outstanding and with my name change I had to change my name on the loans.
Most went smoothly but I had two wrinkles.
My mortgage changed easily, I just went to the bank and gave them a copy of my probate letter… no problem. Car loan same thing, credit cards… it went mostly smoothly, stocks… I had one snag, and work… one crazy hitch.
The credit card companies all but one had forms to fill out and I had to send a notarized copy of the probate letter but one did it over the phone… big mistake! The person was a non-English speaker and said I could change my name over the phone. That should have been a red flag! The person misspelled my name and now on my credit history I have this note, AKA with the misspelled name. When I tried to correct it security froze my card until they figured it out.
My stocks went easily, they all had forms and wanted a copy of the probate letter, that is all but one. I should have realized that calling down to Texas where the company had the firm that handled their stock transactions was located… a very rude woman told me that they can only change the name on stock certificates for marriage… NOT SEX CHANGE! She told me to sell my stocks and buy them back. I wasn’t going to take 40 years of capital gains just to change my name on the certificates. So I kept my old name on them.
That came back to bite me you know where some fifteen years latter. I lost a dividend check and it had my old name on it so they said they would reissue the check, I just had to fill out a form. Ugh I had to sign my old name and send a copy of my driver license… my driver license had my legal and the certificates had my old name, so I called the same company that I called 15 years before and told them my problem. She said no problem she would send me a form to changed the name on the stock certificate and asked me why I didn’t change my name on the certificate before. I told her what the other woman said, she said that wasn’t true the form has always been the same and that there are boxes to check for either name change due to marriage or a legal name change and in either case you send a copy of the document.
And the hitch at work was really crazy. I transitioned the day I got laid-off, the next day I gave my former employer my probate letter and they changed all the paperwork, or so I thought.
When COBRA ran out and I received my insurance payment booklet it had my old name on the payment stubs... hun? (part of the deal they gave those who took early retirement option was we could buy the company health insurance until we were eligible for Medicare)
It turned out all the paperwork for COBRA was changed but not my retirement paperwork. When they finally straighten it out they said they had Diana retired and my old male name still working… I asked does that mean I can get two checks? They got a chuckle out of that… no dice.
The Forbes article goes on to say…
Student Loans Are Even More Complicated For Transgender Borrowers. Here's HelpI had problems when I changed my name and gender on forms.
Forbes
ByAsia Martin
September 22, 2019
Blossom C. Brown graduated from Mississippi University for Women in 2015 with a degree in public health education and $40,000 in student loans. When the time came to pay off those loans, she faced the complications most of the 44.7 million Americans with student debt confront, plus an additional one: she’s transgender and her loans were all taken out in her old, male birth name.
[…]
Brown discovered that she had to change her name with her student loan servicers when she received a repayment bill in her old name. So she called both of her student loan servicers to update them. She thought it would be safer to pay her loans under her new legal name lest someone suggest she had changed her name to shirk her loans or commit fraud. But to this day, she says, one of those servicers continues to bill her under her former name. Brown is currently making payments to the servicer that has her name change right, but not to the other servicer—that loan is in forbearance until Brown’s name change form is fully processed and approved, she says.
Brown’s experience isn’t unusual. Professionals who assist transgender men, women and non-binary individuals report those who change their names or the sex they identify with run into a variety of issues and hassles with student loans.
Most went smoothly but I had two wrinkles.
My mortgage changed easily, I just went to the bank and gave them a copy of my probate letter… no problem. Car loan same thing, credit cards… it went mostly smoothly, stocks… I had one snag, and work… one crazy hitch.
The credit card companies all but one had forms to fill out and I had to send a notarized copy of the probate letter but one did it over the phone… big mistake! The person was a non-English speaker and said I could change my name over the phone. That should have been a red flag! The person misspelled my name and now on my credit history I have this note, AKA with the misspelled name. When I tried to correct it security froze my card until they figured it out.
My stocks went easily, they all had forms and wanted a copy of the probate letter, that is all but one. I should have realized that calling down to Texas where the company had the firm that handled their stock transactions was located… a very rude woman told me that they can only change the name on stock certificates for marriage… NOT SEX CHANGE! She told me to sell my stocks and buy them back. I wasn’t going to take 40 years of capital gains just to change my name on the certificates. So I kept my old name on them.
That came back to bite me you know where some fifteen years latter. I lost a dividend check and it had my old name on it so they said they would reissue the check, I just had to fill out a form. Ugh I had to sign my old name and send a copy of my driver license… my driver license had my legal and the certificates had my old name, so I called the same company that I called 15 years before and told them my problem. She said no problem she would send me a form to changed the name on the stock certificate and asked me why I didn’t change my name on the certificate before. I told her what the other woman said, she said that wasn’t true the form has always been the same and that there are boxes to check for either name change due to marriage or a legal name change and in either case you send a copy of the document.
And the hitch at work was really crazy. I transitioned the day I got laid-off, the next day I gave my former employer my probate letter and they changed all the paperwork, or so I thought.
When COBRA ran out and I received my insurance payment booklet it had my old name on the payment stubs... hun? (part of the deal they gave those who took early retirement option was we could buy the company health insurance until we were eligible for Medicare)
It turned out all the paperwork for COBRA was changed but not my retirement paperwork. When they finally straighten it out they said they had Diana retired and my old male name still working… I asked does that mean I can get two checks? They got a chuckle out of that… no dice.
The Forbes article goes on to say…
New York student loan lawyer Jay Flesichman says that the name change process for transgender individuals is not too different from common name changes public and private agencies process if newlyweds change their names. (Except there is an extra twist involving Selective Service registration, which we’ll explain later.) First, here are the basic steps Flesichman recommends transgender individuals take after receiving a court ordered name change.The article goes on to list the order of step to take to change your name on documents and I do recommend you do them in that order… Probate court, Social Security, driver license, Medicare (if old enough for it), and then your loans other legal papers. And my advice is if they want to do it over the phone don’t do it! Request a paper form.
No comments:
Post a Comment