Your name after the divorce: keep it, drop it, combine it

Nothing changes unless you act

When the divorce becomes final, nothing happens to your name at first. The married name remains the name of both of you, including the spouse who took it on at the wedding.

This is not a stopgap but the normal case under the law (§ 1355 (5) BGB). Your former spouse cannot forbid you to keep using it, no matter how long the marriage lasted or how the proceedings went. It makes no difference either if the spouse whose name it was remarries.

The four options

If you want to change something, you have a choice:

• Keep the married name, with no declaration and no application.
• Take back your birth name, the name on your birth certificate.
• Take back the name you used before, relevant if you were already married once before this marriage.
• Combine, that is, put your own birth name before or after the married name, traditionally as an added name.

Since the reform of German name law took effect on May 1, 2025, there is one more option: spouses can form true double names from both surnames, with or without a hyphen. If you use such a double name, you have more room to choose after the divorce.

There is no deadline, and that is intentional

Unlike many other consequences of a divorce, no clock is running here. You can still make the declaration weeks, months or years after the divorce becomes final.

That takes the pressure off, because the decision is rarely just a formality. Some want to keep sharing a name with their children. Some have built something professionally under this name. Others want to draw a line as quickly as possible. All three are legitimate, and none of them has to be settled in the month of the divorce.

How to make the declaration

The Standesamt (registry office) is responsible. The declaration must be publicly certified or recorded by the registry office, and you present the final divorce decision. If you married in Frankfurt, your marriage record is kept at the Frankfurt am Main registry office. As a rule, you can make the declaration itself at the registry office where you live, which forwards it.

It makes sense to bundle the change with all the other updates: ID card and passport, registration office, bank and loans, insurers, employer, health and pension insurance. Add vehicle documents and, where applicable, the land register. If these get out of step, you end up with exactly the friction you wanted to leave behind by changing your name.

What applies to the children

A child’s surname does not change automatically when a parent changes their name. It stays as it is for now, even if the child then has a different name from the parent they live with.

The 2025 reform has eased this point. Children can now more easily follow a divorce-related name change by the parent whose household they stay in, and can also receive a double name in the process. Adult children decide for themselves. For minors, the parent with parental responsibility takes part, and from a certain age the child’s consent is required.

This is different from Einbenennung (a stepfamily name change, § 1617e BGB). It covers the case where a child is to take the name from a new marriage of the parent who cares for them. If the child bears the other parent’s name, or that parent shares parental responsibility, their consent is needed. The Familiengericht (family court) can replace that consent if the name change serves the child’s welfare. In practice, this route is more likely to lead to conflict, and it pays to get legal advice before expectations take hold.

What comes next

What else happens at the end of the proceedings, and when the divorce becomes final, is explained in How does a divorce work?. What to expect at the hearing itself is covered in The divorce hearing: how it runs in court.

If the name question also touches on parental responsibility or where the children live, it belongs in the wider context of parental responsibility and contact.