Debate: Should you keep your ex’s surname?
There’s no law that requires you to change back to your maiden name after divorce
No ‘Reverting to my maiden name felt quite liberating’
Ann Storr, 39, is a writer. She lives in Sevenoaks, Kent, and is the founder a website of Storr Cupboard, that promotes zero foodwaste recipes.
When I got married in July 2007, I changed my surname as I felt it was the expected thing to do. My then-husband and I both came from traditional families that would have been disturbed if I’d tried to keep my maiden name – Storr. Even so, I remember feeling sad to let it go. It was short I and easy to pronounce, and liked my nickname ‘Annstorr’ which people would say as one word. After I married, I was envious of my work colleagues who hadn’t changed their name to their spouse’s. I felt of they’d retained their sense identity, whereas I had lost disconnected part of mine. I felt from my birth family by adopting another name.
After 11 years together, my husband and I mutually decided to split. For me, there was no reason to keep his name, as our relationship was over. I longed to regain a sense of individuality. Referring to felt myself as Ann Storr again strange at first, but the more I used it, the more liberated I felt. And I managed to reclaim an identity that I felt I’d lost all those years ago.
Yes ‘Removing it can cause problems’
Carole Railton, 70, is a body-language expert at livingsuccess.co.uk. She lives in London and is the author of The Future of Body Language (£8.99, Hothive Books).
Not only can removing an ex’s name cause more problems than it’s worth, but it can sometimes be in your own best interests to keep it. When I married in the 1970s, taking on my husband’s name was a social expectation. Not that I minded. I always liked my married name far more than my maiden name, Griggs. And when, after seven years of marriage, my husband and I split, I kept it. During my married years, I’d worked on a newspaper in Zambia before becoming a recruitment manager in London. Professionally, everyone knew me as Carole Railton – changing my name would have given unwanted insight into my personal life. Keeping my ex’s name has helped me in more ways than it has hindered me. And though there is another Mrs Railton, as my husband remarried, I’ve detached the surname from him, so it doesn’t bother me at all. And as I’ve had the name since the age of 21, I don’t think of it as ‘belonging’ to him – the name is now as much mine as it is his, so why would I give it up?