: New birth certificate :
With all the legal hoops I've jumped through in the past year, it shouldn't surprise me that I have to jump through some more just to get a New Jersey driver's license. I thought it would be easy, since I already have a valid Texas license in my new name (and we all know what a struggle that was). But no, it turns out it's a lot harder than it should be.
The New Jersey DMV requires five points of identification, including at least one primary document, which is a birth certificate or U.S. passport, but the list does not include another state's driver license. Since my passport is in my old name and with a 10-year-old picture of me, I need my birth certificate (which of course has my old name and was destroyed in the fire anyway). So I need to correct the name on my birth certificate and get a copy in order to get my new license.
Once I get a new birth certificate issued, my old one will be sealed so no one will be able to access it (including myself) without a court order. I might just get a copy of the old one first for nostalgia's sake, and so I can use it for astrological purposes. I don't know the time I was born, for example, or what hospital. Unfortunately, Arizona won't change the gender marker on a birth certificate without a court order, so I might have to go through the entire process of going to court and amending my new birth certificate and getting a new license after SRS. I think there's a real opportunity for some enterprising person to start a business just to help people change their names, not just TG people, but married women and people who change their names by choice.
The New Jersey DMV requires five points of identification, including at least one primary document, which is a birth certificate or U.S. passport, but the list does not include another state's driver license. Since my passport is in my old name and with a 10-year-old picture of me, I need my birth certificate (which of course has my old name and was destroyed in the fire anyway). So I need to correct the name on my birth certificate and get a copy in order to get my new license.
Once I get a new birth certificate issued, my old one will be sealed so no one will be able to access it (including myself) without a court order. I might just get a copy of the old one first for nostalgia's sake, and so I can use it for astrological purposes. I don't know the time I was born, for example, or what hospital. Unfortunately, Arizona won't change the gender marker on a birth certificate without a court order, so I might have to go through the entire process of going to court and amending my new birth certificate and getting a new license after SRS. I think there's a real opportunity for some enterprising person to start a business just to help people change their names, not just TG people, but married women and people who change their names by choice.
