The rest of what we have written about West Virginia. Every figure is quoted from West Virginia’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Changing your name back in West Virginia
Whether you can get your former name back in the divorce itself — and what it costs in West Virginia if you miss that moment.
See a different stateWest Virginia
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 West Virginia-specific.
The short version5 points · tap one to jump to it
- Restoring your name in the divorce — West Virginia restores a former name through the divorce itself, under W. Va. Code § 48-5-613.
- If the decree is already final
- 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.
- What catches people out in West Virginia — West Virginia has a PARTIAL domestic violence / personal safety exemption, and its limits matter.
- Every state
In this subject 6
Restoring your name in the divorce
The short version5 points · tap one to jump to it
- Restoring your name in the divorce — West Virginia restores a former name through the divorce itself, under W. Va. Code § 48-5-613.
- If the decree is already final
- 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.
- What catches people out in West Virginia — West Virginia has a PARTIAL domestic violence / personal safety exemption, and its limits matter.
- Every state
In this subject 6
West Virginia restores a former name through the divorce itself, under W. Va. Code § 48-5-613.
“Former name of party; restoration. The court, upon ordering a divorce, shall if requested to do so by either party, allow such party to resume the name used prior to his or her marriage without the necessity of filing a separate petition pursuant to section one hundred one, article twenty-five, chapter forty-eight of this code. If a name change is requested, the court shall also issue a certificate of divorce reflecting that change in name. The certificate shall be no longer than one page. For purpose of confidentiality, the certificate shall not be considered an order. The certificate shall include the style of the divorce case, the name on the birth certificate of the party requesting the name change, that party’s date of birth, that party’s social security number, the date on which the name change is effective, and the new name of that party. In order to be valid, the certificate shall be certified by a clerk of the court. The certified certificate may be used by that person for all lawful purposes, including as a proof of legal name change for driver licensing purposes or state identification card at the Division of Motor Vehicles.”
How much choice the judge has: mandatory on request – ‘the court … shall if requested to do so by either party, allow such party to resume the name used prior to his or her marriage’
Who may ask: either party
The statutory restoration in West Virginia has to be requested while the case is open. It is still much the cheapest moment to do it. But there is a way back afterwards, set out in the next section.
If the decree is already final
Section 48-5-613 operates ‘upon ordering a divorce’ and expressly frames itself as a way to get the name back ‘without the necessity of filing a separate petition pursuant to section one hundred one, article twenty-five, chapter forty-eight.’ If the request was not made in the divorce, that separate petition is exactly what you are left with – and in West Virginia the gap between the two routes is unusually wide: the article 25 petition costs a $200 filing fee, requires a one-year county residency, requires newspaper publication as a Class I legal advertisement, requires a hearing at which anyone ‘likely to be injured’ may appear and be heard in opposition, and requires the order to be recorded and indexed at the county commission clerk’s office under both the old and new names.
Authority: W. Va. Code §§ 48-25-101 through 48-25-106
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: W. Va. Code § 48-25-101 (petition; contents; notice), § 48-25-102 (objections), § 48-25-103 (when court may or may not order change), § 48-25-104 (recordation), § 48-25-105 (when new name to be used), § 48-25-106 (unlawful change of name), § 48-25-107 (unlawful change of name by certain felons and registrants); fees under W. Va. Code § 59-1-11
- Court: Circuit Court or Family Court of the county in which the petitioner resides (W. Va. Code § 48-25-101(a))
- Filing fee: $200.00 general circuit-clerk fee for instituting a proceeding – see notes; plus the newspaper’s publication charge and a deed-rate recording fee at the county commission clerk
- Residency: W. Va. Code § 48-25-101(a)(1): the verified petition must affirm ‘That he or she has been a bona fide resident of the county for at least one year prior to the filing of the petition or that he or she is a nonresident of the county who was born in the county, was married in the county and was previously a resident of the county for a period of at least fifteen years.’
- Publication: yes. W. Va. Code § 48-25-101(b): ‘After filing the petition and at least ten days before the hearing to consider the application, the person shall cause a notice of the time and place that the application will be made to be published as a Class I legal advertisement in compliance with the provisions of article three, chapter fifty-nine of this code. The petitioner shall in the notice set forth the name to which his or her name will be changed, unless as shown in the petition to the court, the name change is being requested because the petitioner desires to protect his or her identity for personal safety reasons: Provided, That upon good cause shown, there may be a closed hearing. The publication area for the publication is the county. The publication shall contain a provision that the hearing may be rescheduled without further notice or publication.’ Read the safety clause carefully: it excuses the petitioner from putting the NEW NAME in the notice; it does not excuse the publication itself. Section 48-25-103(a) also conditions the order on ‘proof of the publication of the notice.’
- Background check: No fingerprints and no criminal history record are required. Instead, W. Va. Code § 48-25-101(a) makes the petitioner affirm under oath, in the verified petition, that: ‘(4) The name change is not for purposes of avoiding debt or creditors; (5) The petitioner seeking the name change is not a registered sex offender pursuant to any state or federal law; (6) The name change sought is not for purposes of avoiding any state or federal law regarding identity; (7) The name change sought is not for any improper or illegal purpose; (8) The petitioner is not a convicted felon in any jurisdiction; (9) The name change sought is not for any purpose of evading detection, identification or arrest by any local, state or federal law-enforcement agency.’ Section 48-25-103 then adds hard bars: no change for a felon ‘during the time that the person is incarcerated’ (b); none for a person required to register with the State Police under W. Va. Code ch. 15, art. 12 ‘during the period that the person is required to register’ (c); none for a person convicted of first degree murder ‘for a period of ten years after the person is discharged from imprisonment or is discharged from parole, whichever occurs later’ (d); and the same ten-year bar for a person convicted under W. Va. Code § 61-2-14a (e).
- Hearing: required
Official forms
- W. Va. Code § 48-5-613, Former name of party; restoration (official)
- W. Va. Code § 48-25-101, Petition to circuit court or family court for change of name (official)
- W. Va. Code § 48-25-103, When court may or may not order change of name (official)
- W. Va. Code § 59-1-11, Fees to be charged by clerk of circuit court (official)
- West Virginia Judiciary court forms index
What catches people out in West Virginia
West Virginia has a PARTIAL domestic violence / personal safety exemption, and its limits matter. W. Va. Code § 48-25-101(a)(10) requires the petition to state ‘Whether or not the petitioner desires to protect his or her identity for personal safety reasons.’ If the petition shows that, § 48-25-101(b) relieves the petitioner of the duty to ‘set forth the name to which his or her name will be changed’ in the published notice, and adds ‘Provided, That upon good cause shown, there may be a closed hearing.’ What West Virginia does not provide is a waiver of publication itself, a sealing of the file, or an exemption from the § 48-25-104 requirement that the order be recorded with the county commission clerk ‘and index[ed] … under both the old and the new names.’ That public cross-index of old name to new name is the real exposure for a survivor here, and no provision in article 25 turns it off.
Section 48-5-613’s certificate of divorce is a deliberate confidentiality device – the statute says in terms that ‘For purpose of confidentiality, the certificate shall not be considered an order.’ It is a materially better privacy outcome than the standalone petition route.
West Virginia lets the name-change petition go to either circuit court OR family court (§ 48-25-101(a)), which is unusual; most states channel it to one bench.
Section 59-1-11 has no line item for a name change. The $200 figure comes from the catch-all in § 59-1-11(a)(1) covering ‘any other action, cause, suit or proceeding.’ This JSON marks the fee unconfirmed because the fee statute does not name this proceeding – verify with the circuit clerk of the filing county.
There is a further section, § 48-25-107, ‘Unlawful change of name by certain felons and registrants,’ beyond the six sections most summaries list.
Sources for this page
- Restoration in the divorce: https://code.wvlegislature.gov/48-5-613/
- Restoring it after the decree: https://code.wvlegislature.gov/48-25-101/
- Filing fee: https://code.wvlegislature.gov/59-1-11/
Sources we could not reach when this page was built, listed so you know what was not checked rather than assuming it was: code.wvlegislature.gov intermittently reset the connection during retrieval; each section quoted here was successfully re-fetched and read in full; https://www.courtswv.gov/legal-community/court-forms.html contains no name-change form – West Virginia does not appear to publish a statewide adult name-change form packet, so no form link is given
Found an error? Tell us — it goes on the corrections page with the date and how long it was live.