More on Louisiana

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

Changing your name back in Louisiana

Whether you can get your former name back in the divorce itself — and what it costs in Louisiana 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 Louisiana-specific.

Restore it in the divorceYesLa. Civ. Code art. 100
After the decree is finalYes other
Newspaper publicationNot established UNRESOLVED
Background checkYes Yes, in substance, though it is run by the prosecutor rather than by the petitioner…
Separate petition feeNot establishedWe could not confirm this from an official fee schedule, so treat it as indicative and call the clerk before you write the check.
CourtDistrict Court La. R.S. 13:4751(B)

Restoring your name in the divorce

Louisiana restores a former name through the divorce itself, under La. Civ. Code art. 100.

Louisiana is a civil-law jurisdiction and the premise is different from the other states in this batch. La. Civ. Code art. 100, ‘Surname of married persons’, provides: ‘Marriage does not change the name of either spouse. However, a married person may use the surname of either or both spouses as a surname.’ Under Louisiana law your legal name never changed when you married – what changed was the surname you were entitled to use. It follows that after a divorce there is usually nothing to ‘restore’: the birth-certificate name has remained your legal name throughout, and the practical task is updating records (driver’s license, Social Security, passport) rather than obtaining a name change. Louisiana practice nonetheless allows the request to be put in the divorce petition; LouisianaLawHelp (Louisiana’s statewide legal-help portal) states: ‘When you file for divorce, you or your attorney can ask to restore your maiden or prior name in the petition,’ and the decree will then ‘include an order restoring your former name if granted.’

How much choice the judge has: not applicable in the ordinary case – because the legal name did not change on marriage, no judicial restoration is required; where an order is nonetheless sought in the divorce, no statutory standard was located

Who may ask: either party

Not a now-or-never decision

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

If the decree is already final

The genuine name-change proceeding, La. R.S. 13:4751, is reserved for a person who actually wants a different legal name – not for someone reverting to the surname they were born with. That distinction is the single most important thing to get right about Louisiana, because the R.S. 13:4751 route is expensive, requires the district attorney’s involvement, and triggers a background check. Do not file it if art. 100 already gives you the answer. A person who did formally change their legal name during the marriage, or who wants a name they were never known by, does need the R.S. 13:4751 petition.

Authority: La. Civ. Code art. 100

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: La. R.S. 13:4751
  • Court: District Court
  • Residency: La. R.S. 13:4751(B): an adult petitions the district court of the parish of their residence, the parish of their birth, the parish that is venue for the Vital Records Registry (Orleans), or, if incarcerated, the district court of the sentencing parish. No minimum duration of residency is stated.
  • Publication: UNRESOLVED – recorded as null rather than guessed. La. R.S. 13:4751, which was read in full, contains no newspaper publication requirement, and neither the Louisiana state legal-help portal’s name-change guidance nor the official name-change form description mentions publication. But La. R.S. 13:4752 through 13:4755, which carry the procedural steps, we could not retrieved from legis.la.gov (the site exposes no browsable URL for them and search would not surface them), so the absence of a publication requirement in the rest of the chapter is not confirmed. What replaces publication in Louisiana is district attorney scrutiny: ‘When you file your petition with the court, you will also deliver a copy of the petition to the District Attorney (DA),’ and the DA may file a response and may object. SAFETY EXEMPTION: none located. No domestic-violence exemption or confidentiality provision for name changes was found in La. R.S. 13:4751 or in the state legal-help guidance.
  • Background check: Yes, in substance, though it is run by the prosecutor rather than by the petitioner submitting prints. LouisianaLawHelp: ‘When the DA receives a copy of your name change petition they will run a background check,’ and the wait ‘could take a while, depending on how busy your court and DA are.’ Statutory criminal bars are severe and appear in La. R.S. 13:4751(D): a person convicted of a felony cannot petition for a name change until the sentence is satisfied, whether they are imprisoned, on probation, or on parole; and a person convicted of a felony enumerated in La. R.S. 14:2(B) – Louisiana’s crimes of violence list – is PERMANENTLY barred from petitioning for a name change.

Official forms

What catches people out in Louisiana

Do not file an R.S. 13:4751 petition to go back to your maiden name. Under La. Civ. Code art. 100 your maiden name never stopped being your legal name; you were using your spouse’s surname by permission of the Code, not by legal change.
The district attorney is a party to the process in a way no other state in this batch replicates. The DA gets a copy of the petition, runs a background check, and can object.
A conviction for any crime of violence listed in La. R.S. 14:2(B) is a permanent, lifetime bar on petitioning for a name change in Louisiana. Not a delay – a bar.
Any other felony conviction bars a petition until the sentence is fully satisfied, including probation and parole.
Filing fees are set parish by parish. LouisianaLawHelp puts the range at $300 to more than $500, which is high relative to the rest of this batch, but no official parish clerk fee schedule was verified here – call your Clerk of Court.
Worth knowing

STRUCTURAL DIFFERENCE: Louisiana does not have a ‘restoration of former name’ statute in its divorce law because it does not have a name change on marriage to undo. La. Civ. Code art. 100 is the whole answer for most divorced Louisianians, and it means the common-law framing of this question does not fit the state.

Louisiana’s substitute for public notice is prosecutorial review. The DA receives the petition and runs a background check – a screening model rather than a publication model.

The permanent lifetime bar for crimes of violence under La. R.S. 13:4751(D) is one of the harshest name-change restrictions in the country.

Fee, publication requirement, and hearing requirement are all left null. Legis.la.gov exposes La. R.S. 13:4751 at a stable URL but offers no navigable path to 13:4752-13:4755, and no official parish fee schedule was reachable. The $300-$500 range circulating on the state legal-help portal is a range, not a fee schedule, and is not recorded as a verified fee.

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: La. R.S. 13:4752, 13:4753, 13:4754, 13:4755 – no retrievable URL on legis.la.gov; the site’s Title 13 table of contents stops well short of the 4700 series and search would not surface these sections; No official Louisiana parish Clerk of Court name-change fee schedule was reachable

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.