Must a wife's maiden name be used on estate documents?

[OKCEngineer]

Jurisdiction

Oklahoma

My wife and I have been married for over 50 years, and we are trying to organize our estate documents in case one of us dies. In such documents, is it necessary to use both her maiden name and her married name? i.e., "Susan Marie Smith Jones" - or will just "Susan Marie Jones" suffice?

 

[Zigner]

Congratulations on the longevity of your marriage (and yourselves, for that matter).
You are wise to try to get your affairs in order. I suspect that you would benefit from professional assistance in this matter in order to be confident that your wishes are carried out. With that said, you both should use your legal names. If your wife's legal name is "Susan Marie Smith Jones" then that is the name to use. If your wife's legal name is "Susan Marie Jones" then that is the name to use. Look to your driver licenses and/or passports for guidance.
One caveat to mention is that, if there are assets that are titled differently, then that should be taken into account in your planning.

 

[adjusterjack]

You can't go wrong by using her "legal" name. The one that's on her driver license, tax return, bank accounts, etc.

Use of the maiden name is probably optional and might be useful in properly identifying a person with a very common name, although birthdates and SSNs would also be useful.

I don't think that there is a "rule" one way or the other.

 

[Zigner]

You can't go wrong by using her "legal" name. The one that's on her driver license, tax return, bank accounts, etc.

Use of the maiden name is probably optional and might be useful in properly identifying a person with a very common name, although birthdates and SSNs would also be useful.

I don't think that there is a "rule" one way or the other.

My take on it is that, after 50 years, her maiden name is likely not that relevant. Of course, it can't hurt to reference it in some way, but also be mindful of the caveat I mentioned above.

 

[OKCEngineer]

Thank you, everyone!

 

[Red Kayak]

Use of the maiden name is probably optional and might be useful in properly identifying a person with a very common name, although birthdates and SSNs would also be useful.

Also if there are other people in the family with the same or similar name. My sister in law and paternal grandmother shared the same first name, and my mother's middle name was a variant. Perhaps that's why my paternal grandfather explicitly mentioned his daughter in law and granddaughter in law, leaving them a token amount, to ensure that there was no ambiguity.

For things like wills and trusts, it can be good to use the legal name with a description of the relationship ("my wife, Susan Marie Jones") .

 

[Tax Counsel]

My wife and I have been married for over 50 years, and we are trying to organize our estate documents in case one of us dies. In such documents, is it necessary to use both her maiden name and her married name? i.e., "Susan Marie Smith Jones" - or will just "Susan Marie Jones" suffice?

How you identify the person depends on the particular document involved. Typically with a will, for example, the goal is sufficiently identify the person so that anyone who might have a claim to his/her estate can find the estate proceeding and put in their claim. In my state, it is common to identify a married person who changed their last name to match their spouse's last by referencing both the married name and the premarital name. For example, suppose Jane Doe married John Smith and as a result of the marriage she takes on the name Jane Smith. I would write her name at the beginning of the will as: Jane Smith, née Jane Doe. (The word née is defined literally as "from the mother" and is used in the law to refer to the person's name at birth.) The phrase formerly known as is also a common way of indicating a change of name. Other kinds of documents may need only her legal name or the name she was most commonly known as. When in doubt, it's hard to go wrong giving both the legal name the spouse had when he/she died and whatever other names he/she had before that name. The more uncommon the last name at death the less chance there is of creating confusion over who the decedent was. With very common names like Smith, it becomes more important to provide something more than just her name when she died to help identify her from all the other Smiths out there.