Anybody have experience in high school with or without having a legal name change, but wanting to be called by a name other than their birth name?
Talking to your guidance counselor is a good idea, also talk to your principal and teachers, because if you can't get anything done with the administration of your school you'll have to just tell you teachers every semester. Ask if you school has a preferred name policy. And as long as you live in a progressive state it should be fairly easy to change your name legally. Although it costs like $300.
Yeah, it can be pretty pricey, though it depends on where you are. If you're in the Philadelphia area, the Mazzoni Center could help you out. I believe if you go through their legal team, it's about $180 or so.
Figured we'd try talking to guidance counselor for recommendations. To clarify, I'm a father to my FTM child, and trying to help them figure this out. I'm clueless. I think the school called another FTM by his chosen name at graduation, so I think my child may get their name preference. I'm thinking a backup plan is to start the legal name change, as well. That way, if we run into anybody not friendly, we have that going for us. I'm not sure if there are ramifications I'm not considering, though. Are there any downsides to having a male legal name and still having female body parts? ---------- Post added 20th Jun 2016 at 01:45 PM ---------- We live in a red state that is pretty conservative. It looks fairly simple as long as both parents agree. We do. I think the legal bit is a couple hundred dollars and then waiting after posting notice more than anything.
Well I live in NC, when I came out in school and changed my pronouns half the school had already assumed I was a bio male because I was so quiet and the other half made jokes that I was a man, so when I asked them to actually use male pronouns suddenly it became really difficult for people. My name change was just a spelling thing, from Erin to Aaron, so my teachers wrote that name down on the board and groups etc. If you want to change your name, teachers will probably be reasonable and write it in public forums as the preferred, but classmates it's a 50/50 deal. They can't legally change it in the system without legal action, so it will just be in places where they have control over the matter. ---------- Post added 20th Jun 2016 at 01:55 PM ---------- Here it costs $120 for court fees but you have to hire an attorney because you need a sh*t load of paperwork, its costing me $375 per hour with an attorney, I needed like 2 affidavits of good intent, an affidavit regarding child support, a state and federal background check (which required getting fingerprinted and two $50 fees), a petition to the court, a form and proof of zero military affiliation, a certified birth certificate issued within one year (ordered for $50),2 proofs of residence, a special proceedings sheet, a notice posted in the court house 10 days for intent to change name, and photo id. All of which had to be formatted by an attorney and notarized at the court house. Absolutely ridiculous and took 6+ months to gather by mail.
The main problems are if his legal gender marker is still female people can be assholes, and since you live in a conservative state, the judge might be an asshole and refuse to change your son's name because "girls can't have boy names". A problem, in Texas at least, in conservative states is that judges won't want to change documentation for trans people because the lose voters and donors, and won't be able to stay in office. If you want to you can go ahead and get his gender marker changed on everything but his birth certificate. But this you would most definitely run into issues finding a judge who will do it. One of the girls at my trans support group just had her information changed. Her parents went through lambda legal, but it cost them a shit ton of money. If you can go to a group in your area where you can talk to trans youth or parents of trans youth about changing names and other information legally, you can learn more about the specific laws in your state.
