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Your name after the divorce: keep it, drop it, combine it
“Do I have to give my name back now?” is one of those questions that come up almost in passing in a first conversation and yet go closer to the heart than many a question of assets. The reassuring answer: you do not have to do anything at all. And if you do want to change something, there is no deadline for it.
Karcher Rechtsanwälte in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, focusing on uncontested divorce and international family law. Advice in German, English and Spanish.
Part of our guide How does a divorce work?Nothing changes without your doing anything
When the divorce becomes final, what happens in terms of name law is at first: nothing. The married name stays the name of both, including of the person who took it on through the marriage.
That is not a transitional solution but the statutory standard case (§ 1355 (5) BGB). The former spouse cannot forbid you to continue using it, and that applies regardless of how long the marriage lasted or how the proceedings went. A new marriage of the person whose name it was changes nothing about it either.
You keep the name as long as you declare nothing else. And you have unlimited time for that.
The four variants
Anyone who does want to change something has a choice:
- Keeping the married name, without a declaration and without an application.
- Taking your birth name again, the name from your birth certificate.
- Taking back the name you used before, relevant where you were already married once before this marriage.
- Combining, that is placing your own birth name before or after the married name, classically as an accompanying name.
Since the reform of name law that came into force on 1 May 2025, a further possibility has been added: spouses can form genuine double names from both surnames, with or without a hyphen. Anyone using such a double name has correspondingly more room for arrangement after the divorce.
There is no deadline, and that is deliberate
Unlike with many other consequences of a divorce, no clock is running here. The declaration is still possible weeks, months or years after the divorce becomes final.
That takes the pressure off, because the decision is rarely a mere formality. Some want to keep sharing the children’s name. Some have built something professionally under this name. Others want to draw a line as quickly as possible. All three attitudes are permissible, and none of them has to be settled in the month of the divorce.
How the declaration is made
The competent authority is the Standesamt (registry office). The declaration has to be publicly certified or made for the record of the registry office; the final divorce order has to be submitted. Where you married in Frankfurt, your marriage register is held at the registry office in Frankfurt am Main; the declaration itself you can as a rule make at the registry office of your place of residence, which passes it on.
It makes sense to bundle the change with the other re-registrations: identity card and passport, the residents’ registration office, bank and loan agreements, insurers, employer, health insurer, pension insurer, vehicle papers and, where relevant, the land register. Where those drift apart, you get exactly the friction that the change of name was meant to leave behind.
What applies to the children
A child’s family name does not change automatically with a parent’s change of name. It stays as it is at first, even where the child is then called something different from the parent it lives with.
The 2025 reform has taken the sting out of this point: children can now more easily join a divorce-related change of name by the parent in whose household they remain, and can receive a double name in the process. Adult children decide for themselves; for minors the parent with custody participates, and from a certain age the child’s consent is required.
To be distinguished from that is Einbenennung (giving the child the name of a new family, § 1617e BGB): it concerns the case where a child is to receive the name from a new marriage of the caring parent. Where the child uses the other parent’s name or that parent shares custody, their consent is needed; the family court can replace it where the change serves the child’s welfare. That is the route more prone to conflict in practice, and one where legal advice pays off before expectations arise.
What comes next
What else happens at the end of the proceedings and from when the divorce is final is described by how does a divorce work?; what awaits you at the hearing itself, by the divorce hearing: how it runs in court.
Where the question of names also touches questions of custody or of where the children live, it belongs in the larger context of custody & contact rights.
Competence, required evidence and fees follow the respective registry office and can change. What is binding is the information from the registry office responsible for you. In binational marriages, foreign name law may additionally have to be observed; we advise on that separately.
Attorney at law · focus on family law
Admitted since 2010, more than fifteen years of experience in advising and representation. The contact for new instructions at Karcher Rechtsanwälte in Frankfurt-Gallus.
Legal notice: This article is provided for general information and does not replace legal advice in an individual case. Any laws, deadlines and amounts mentioned reflect the state of affairs at the time of publication and may change. A binding assessment requires a personal consultation.