The rest of what we have written about Kansas. Every figure is quoted from Kansas’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Changing your name back in Kansas
Whether you can get your former name back in the divorce itself — and what it costs in Kansas if you miss that moment.
See a different stateKansas
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 Kansas-specific.
Restoring your name in the divorce
Kansas restores a former name through the divorce itself, under K.S.A. 23-2716.
‘Upon the request of a spouse, the court shall order the restoration of that spouse’s maiden or former name. The court shall have jurisdiction to restore the spouse’s maiden or former name at or after the time the decree of divorce becomes final.’ (Enacted as New Section 10 of 2011 Senate Bill 24, the Kansas Family Law Code recodification.)
How much choice the judge has: mandatory on request – ‘the court shall order the restoration’
Who may ask: either party
Kansas does not require this to be settled before the decree is final.
If the decree is already final
Kansas expressly keeps the divorce court’s jurisdiction open: the statute grants power to restore the name ‘at or after the time the decree of divorce becomes final.’ You go back to the same case, not to a new chapter 60 name-change action. The Kansas Judicial Council publishes a form for exactly this – an ‘Affidavit Requesting Order Restoring Name’ with a companion Order – so the post-decree route is an affidavit in the divorce file rather than a fresh lawsuit.
Authority: K.S.A. 23-2716
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: K.S.A. 60-1401 and 60-1402
- Court: District Court
- Filing fee: $173.00 (statutory district court docket fee)
- Residency: K.S.A. 60-1402(a): the petition is filed in the county where the petitioner resides and must state ‘That the petitioner has been a resident of the state for at least 60 days.’
- Publication: not automatically. K.S.A. 60-1402(b): ‘Service of notice of the hearing may be made either by mail or by publication, in the discretion of the court.’ If publication is ordered it follows K.S.A. 60-307(d); if mailed notice is ordered, ‘service of notice may be made by registered or certified mail to parties of interest, as prescribed by the court.’ So publication in Kansas is a judicial choice, not a statutory command. SAFETY EXEMPTION: there is no separate domestic-violence exemption statute, because none is needed to avoid publication – the court already has discretion to direct mailed notice instead. A survivor’s argument in Kansas is made to the judge under 60-1402(b) rather than under a special safety provision. No express confidentiality or file-sealing provision for name changes was located in K.S.A. 60-1401 or 60-1402.
- Background check: No fingerprinting or criminal history check appears in K.S.A. 60-1401 or 60-1402. The only substantive standard is in 60-1402(c): ‘If upon hearing the judge is satisfied as to the truth of the allegations of the petition, and that there is reasonable cause for changing the name of the petitioner the judge shall so order.’
- Hearing: required
Official forms
- Adult Name Change forms (Kansas Judicial Council)
- Notice of Hearing by Publication – adult name change (Kansas Judicial Council)
- Instructions for Name Change – Adult, July 2024 (Kansas Judicial Council)
- Affidavit Requesting Order Restoring Name (Kansas Judicial Council)
- Decree of Divorce with children (Kansas Judicial Council form, citing K.S.A. 23-2716)
- District Court Filing Fees (Kansas Self-Help)
What catches people out in Kansas
Kansas is one of the very few states where the divorce court’s power to restore a name expressly survives the decree becoming final. Most states in this batch cut it off at the judgment or shortly after.
Publication is discretionary in Kansas, not mandatory – a meaningful correction to the common online claim that a Kansas name change always requires three weeks of newspaper notice.
Restoration is mandatory on request (‘shall order’), so a Kansas judge has no discretion to refuse a spouse’s request to resume a maiden or former name.
The K.S.A. 23-2716 text quoted here was read from the Legislature’s own enrolled 2011 SB 24 because ksrevisor.gov intermittently refused automated retrieval of the codified section; the citation itself is independently corroborated by the Kansas Judicial Council’s Decree of Divorce form, which cites ‘K.S.A. 23-2716’ in its name-change paragraphs.
Sources for this page
- Restoration in the divorce: https://www.kslegislature.gov/li_2012/b2011_12/measures/documents/sb24_enrolled.pdf
- Separate name-change petition: https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch60/060_014_0002.html
- Filing fee: https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch60/060_020_0001.html
Sources we could not reach when this page was built, listed so you know what was not checked rather than assuming it was: https://ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch23/023_027_0016.html (robots.txt fetch failure on repeated attempts); https://self-help.kscourts.gov/NameChange and https://self-help.kscourts.gov/Home/Fees (403); https://www.kansasjudicialcouncil.org/sites/default/files/Instructions%20for%20Adult%20Name%20Change%20(7-2024).pdf (404 to automated retrieval; listed for the reader)
Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date and how long it was live.