More on Connecticut

The rest of what we have written about Connecticut. Every figure is quoted from Connecticut’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.

Changing your name back in Connecticut

Whether you can get your former name back in the divorce itself — and what it costs in Connecticut if you miss that moment.

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The federal half is the same everywhere

Social Security, the passport, and the order to do them in are identical in all fifty states and are on the main name-change page. This page is the part that is Connecticut-specific.

Restore it in the divorceYesConn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 46b-63(a) (formerly Sec. 46-60), ‘Restoration of birth name or former name of spouse’
After the decree is finalYes motion to modify the decree
Newspaper publicationNot required No newspaper publication. Connecticut uses a mailed Notice of Hearing plus a targeted…
Background checkYes Not fingerprinting, but yes to a records check, and it happens on every petition. The…
Separate petition fee$250.00Confirmed from an official schedule.
CourtProbate Court for the district… File in the Probate Court district that covers the town where you reside

Restoring your name in the divorce

Connecticut restores a former name through the divorce itself, under Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 46b-63(a) (formerly Sec. 46-60), ‘Restoration of birth name or former name of spouse’.

‘(a) At the time of entering a decree dissolving a marriage, the court, upon request of either spouse, shall restore the birth name or former name of such spouse.’

How much choice the judge has: mandatory on request – ‘shall restore.’ The statute’s own history note records that P.A. 78-101 rewrote the section ‘requiring restoration of wife’s birth or former name upon her request where previously restoration of name was dependent upon court’s discretion,’ and P.A. 88-364 substituted ‘either spouse’ for ‘the wife.’

Who may ask: either party

Not a now-or-never decision

Connecticut does not require this to be settled before the decree is final.

If the decree is already final

Connecticut is among the most generous states here. ‘(b) At any time after entering a decree dissolving a marriage, the court, upon motion of either spouse, shall modify such judgment and restore the birth name or former name of such spouse. The court shall rule on any motion filed by such spouse to have his or her birth name or former name restored without a hearing.’ No deadline, mandatory (‘shall modify’), and since P.A. 18-75 (effective July 1, 2018) the court must decide it on the papers – no hearing, no appearance. Filed as a motion in the existing dissolution file in Superior Court; whether the clerk charges a motion fee we could not verified.

Authority: Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 46b-63(b)

The separate name-change petition

This is the route if the divorce route is closed to you, or if you want a name that is not a former one.

  • Statute: Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 45a-99 (Probate Court jurisdiction to grant change of name); Sec. 52-11 and Sec. 46b-1(6) (Superior Court)
  • Court: Probate Court for the district covering the town where you reside (concurrent jurisdiction with the Superior Court under Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 52-11 and Sec. 46b-1(6))
  • Filing fee: $250.00
  • Residency: File in the Probate Court district that covers the town where you reside.
  • Publication: No newspaper publication. Connecticut uses a mailed Notice of Hearing plus a targeted agency check instead: ‘Notice of the petition for change of name will be sent to the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to determine if the petitioner is on the Sex Offender Registry or Deadly Weapons Registry.’
  • Background check: Not fingerprinting, but yes to a records check, and it happens on every petition. The Probate Court sends notice of every name-change petition to the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to check the Sex Offender Registry and the Deadly Weapons Registry. If the petitioner IS on either registry, Sec. 45a-99(b) requires them, before filing, to notify the Commissioner on a prescribed form and to include a sworn statement that the change ‘is not being sought for the purpose of avoiding the legal consequences of a criminal conviction’; the Commissioner has standing (through the Attorney General) to challenge the petition, and the court may deny it on a preponderance of the evidence that the purpose was to avoid such consequences. The petitioner must also supply a certified long-form birth certificate and two forms of ID, one with a photo.
  • Hearing: required

Official forms

What catches people out in Connecticut

Do not file a Probate Court petition to get a former name back after a Connecticut divorce. Sec. 46b-63(b) lets you move in the old dissolution file, it is mandatory, and the court must decide it without a hearing. The Probate route costs $250 and requires a hearing you must attend in person.
Sec. 45a-99(a) expressly carves out of Probate Court jurisdiction ‘a change of name granted in accordance with subsection (a) of section 46b-63’ – the divorce restoration belongs to the Superior Court.
Sec. 46b-63 restores a ‘birth name or former name.’ It is not a route to a brand-new name; that is the Sec. 45a-99 / Sec. 52-11 petition.
For the Probate petition you need a certified LONG-FORM birth certificate plus two IDs, one with a photo. Ordering the long-form certificate takes lead time.
Every Connecticut name-change petition is reported to DESPP for a registry check – so it is not a private process even though there is no newspaper ad.
Worth knowing

The 2018 amendment (P.A. 18-75, S. 5, effective July 1, 2018) is the practical headline: a post-decree motion to restore a former name must be ruled on WITHOUT a hearing. That is a real access-to-justice improvement and it is not widely reflected in online guidance.

Connecticut has no newspaper publication requirement for a name change at all, so the domestic-violence publication-exemption question does not arise. No specific DV-related confidentiality or sealing provision for name changes was found in Sec. 45a-99 or on the Probate Courts’ own name-change page. Survivors relying on Connecticut should ask the Probate Court about sealing under the Probate Court Rules of Procedure – that possibility was not verifiable from a primary source here and is recorded as unverified, not as a ‘no’.

The statute is fully gender-neutral in its current form (‘either spouse’), the result of P.A. 88-364; the section heading still reads ‘of spouse’.

The $250 is the Probate Court’s catch-all filing fee for ‘All other petitions, motions and applications (other than decedents’ estates and accountings)’ under C.G.S. Sec. 45a-106a – it is uniform statewide, not county-by-county, which is unusual.

fee_effective_date left null – the Probate Courts’ fee page cites the statute but publishes no effective date.

Sources for this page

Sources we could not reach when this page was built, listed so you know what was not checked rather than assuming it was: http://www.cga.ct.gov serves an incomplete TLS chain (missing the GoDaddy intermediate); it was reachable only after adding the intermediate from the certificate’s own AIA URL. Anyone re-checking this may see a certificate error in some tools.; https://www.ctprobate.gov/Pages/Change-of-Name.aspx – old SharePoint-era URL, now 404; the live page is /other-matters/name-changes

Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date and how long it was live.

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Sources last checked30 August 2026
Page published30 August 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.