How Much Does It Cost to Change Your Name?

There is no single national price for a legal name change. Court filing fees are set state by state, and in roughly a third of states they are not even set statewide, they are set by each county, parish, or circuit, so two petitioners with identical paperwork in the same state can pay different amounts depending on which courthouse they file in. This page compiles the filing-fee picture for every state from official fee schedules and court self-help pages, flags where no statewide figure exists at all, and covers the other real costs (publication, fingerprinting, certified copies) and the paths that avoid a filing fee entirely.

Fees change, sometimes with little notice. North Dakota's fee doubled from $80 to $160 effective July 1, 2025, and Montana's own printed court fee schedule was still showing a superseded $120 figure months after the state's actual fee dropped to $90 under a 2025 amendment. Treat every figure below as a starting estimate and confirm the current amount with your own court before filing. For the underlying legal process these fees attach to, see How to Legally Change Your Name; for your state's exact current fee, forms, and fee-waiver process, see Name Change Laws by State.

Information last verified on 2026-08-11. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

State-by-State Filing Fee Table

Figures below are typical or representative, drawn from official state and county fee schedules where one exists. Where a state sets no statewide figure, the table says so explicitly rather than guessing a number; confirm the actual amount with the court where you plan to file.

Why So Many States Show No Statewide Figure

A fee that varies by county is not a research gap, it reflects how a number of states actually wrote the law. Missouri's statute, for example, sets the name-change filing fee as whatever is "now or may hereafter be allowed in similar cases" in that circuit court, delegating the number to each of the state's 46 circuits individually. Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Georgia, Arizona, and Florida show similar county-by-county or circuit-by-circuit variation. In practice, this means the single most reliable way to get an exact number is to call or check the website of the specific court where you will file, not to rely on any statewide-sounding figure you find in a search result.

Costs Beyond the Filing Fee

Publication

Where a state still requires newspaper publication of your petition, the cost is almost always separate from the filing fee, and it depends on the newspaper the court directs you to use, not a set government price. Pennsylvania petitioners in Philadelphia, for example, can see total costs climb past $900 once publication and copy fees are layered on top of the base filing fee. Publication is a shrinking requirement nationally; see How to Legally Change Your Name for which states have eliminated it recently.

Fingerprinting and Background Checks

States that require a fingerprint-based criminal-history check, including California, Colorado, Florida, and Texas, typically charge for it separately from the court filing fee. Florida's is roughly $40-75 through a private vendor; Texas petitioners generally pay around $20 for a DPS or FBI-format fingerprint card through a service like IdentoGo. Michigan applies a similar fingerprinting cost, roughly $45, for petitioners 22 and older.

Certified Copies of the Order

Once your petition is granted, you will need one or more certified copies of the signed order to actually update Social Security, your driver's license, and other records. Courts typically charge a small per-copy fee, commonly $1 to $40 depending on the state; New Mexico's district courts, for example, charge $1.50 per certified copy plus a separate $25 fee to file the certified final order with the county clerk.

Fee Waivers

Every state that publishes a fee also offers some form of waiver for petitioners who cannot afford it, usually called an in forma pauperis application, a poverty affidavit, or a fee-waiver request. California uses Form FW-001; Washington offers a full waiver on a financial-hardship affidavit; most states use a similar standard-indigency process handled by the clerk's office rather than a name-change-specific form. Ask your court's self-help center or clerk about the current form when you file.

The Free (or Nearly Free) Paths

The Marriage Certificate

In the roughly nine states that codify a marriage-based name change (including Iowa, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, and New Hampshire), the change happens through the marriage-license application itself, with no separate court filing fee at all. See Name Change After Marriage for how that works and its limits.

Restoring a Name Through a Divorce Decree

Many states let you restore a former name as part of the divorce decree itself, avoiding a second filing fee entirely. North Carolina's dedicated resumption filing, for comparison, is $10, a fraction of the state's $120 general name-change fee. Illinois goes further and requires no petition at all for a divorcing spouse resuming a former name. See Name Change After Divorce for how the mechanism varies by state.

Updating Your Social Security Card

However you got your new legal name, updating it with the Social Security Administration is free. The SSA also exempts a name-change replacement card from the federal cap on how many replacement Social Security cards you can request in a year or over your lifetime, so using this path never counts against your limited replacement-card allowance. See Name Change Checklist for the full agency update sequence, including the passport office's own fee-free replacement window.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about the costs of a legal name change in the United States. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Fees are set by state and often by county, and they change without much notice; confirm the current amount and any fee-waiver process with your local court before filing. Consult a licensed attorney for guidance specific to your situation.

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Last updated: 2026-08-11. Fees reflect their published status as of August 2026 and are subject to change without notice.