Legal Name Change in Centre County

Changing your legal name in Pennsylvania requires a court order. It involves filing a petition asking a judge to order that your name be changed. You must file the petition with the prothonotary’s office, and show up for your court date — along with complying with several other legal requirements. You can read Pennsylvania’s laws regarding name changes here.

If you were born in a place other than Pennsylvania, you will have to comply with local laws to change the name on your birth certificate (if this is possible at all). State laws generally require having a court order, but some states may require this order to have specific features; for example, requiring that the court order state your date of birth, or requiring that the process involve a check for outstanding liens. You should familiarize yourself with your state’s policies before beginning the legal name change process to avoid problems down the road.

If you need a lawyer to help you with this process, there are people locally who have expressed interest in helping trans people on a cost reduced or pro bono basis. Reach out to local support groups or group chats for recommendations.

Filing pro se (meaning on your own behalf without a lawyer) involves the following steps:

Complete and print three copies of a petition with cover sheets to take to the prothonotary’s office. Trans residents of Centre County can use an unofficial tool to generate an example petition. Download a copy of the cover sheet and add your current legal name on the line for “Lead Plaintiff’s Name”. Print 3 copies of each document. Your paperwork may include a motion to exempt you from the publishing requirement which involves putting an announcement about your name change in two local newspapers. Centre County residents who have requested an exemption have generally received one.
You will need a signed applicant fingerprint card (FD-258) from a local service. As of this writing, Identogo has a State College office with a fingerprinting service, which charges $20 for an FD-258 with duplicates. You can make an appointment in advance, or go without an appointment. The latter would allow you to avoid using your deadname in the waiting room, although the fingerprint card itself will be under your current legal name. Many Penn State students have reported being sent here by the Student Legal Services department.

If you ask the Centre County prothonotary for advice, or search online, you may be referred to the booking office of the Centre County Correctional Facility for fingerprinting. There are several reasons why trans people might want to avoid this option: it’s a prison, it’s not in State College, and it charges a $4 “convenience fee” for using a credit card. Having your fingerprints taken by CCC is not a requirement for a legal name change; you can go to Identogo or any reputable company offering FD-258 fingerprinting. At least one local trans person received an invalid (unsigned) FD-258 when they went to CCC to be fingerprinted and had to redo it.
Bring your documents, the fingerprint card, and (optionally) a blank personal check to the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte and visit the prothonotary’s office there. Stand in line to get help. They will look over your paperwork, advise you if anything is incorrect, and tell you what you need to do next. You will be charged a filing fee of $155 to file the petition; you can pay by credit card, but an additional 3% fee is added.
Follow the instructions given to you by the prothonotary’s office. This generally means (a) waiting to be sent a court date (or dates) by mail, (b) showing up for your court date (or dates), (c) calling the prothonotary’s office the day before your hearing to request a lien search for Centre County, (d) retrieving an official lien search from any other county you have lived in during the last five years (see note below), and (e) picking up the results of the search from the Centre County prothonotary on the day of your hearing to show to the judge.

In the past, you would have needed to go to the office of the Recorder of Deeds for an additional search of property records to be performed. However, Centre County’s policies changed in 2024 and this is no longer required, as of this writing. Some online sources incorrectly list this as a necessary step. If you have been a Centre County resident for the last 5 years, you only need the lien search that the prothonotary’s office performs.

If you filed a motion to waive the publication requirement, when the court mails you the date of your hearing they should also say whether the judge granted your motion. If your motion was granted, you don’t have to publish your name change. (The judge may decide at their own discretion to hold a hearing to determine whether your motion should be granted. If this happens, you will receive a court date in the mail for this hearing. The judge may ask you questions about why you don’t want to publish your name change.)

If you don’t file the motion, or the judge does not grant the motion, you will have to publish an announcement of your name change in local newspapers. Typically, these are the Centre County Legal Journal and the Centre Daily Times. If you publish notice, you will need to bring proof to your hearing in the form of clipped copies of the physical newspaper. The papers themselves may offer to send you proof of publishing. Some local trans people have reported that they were required to purchase a one-year subscription to the newspaper before being allowed to publish an announcement.
On the day your name change petition is heard in court, don’t forget to pick up proof of your judgment search from the prothonotary (and searches from any other counties). This costs $7. Dress in interview appropriate clothing and arrive at your hearing 15-30 minutes in advance. If your courtroom is large or busy, you may need to check in with a bailiff, otherwise simply wait quietly in the public seating area.

Stand when the judge enters the room. When your case is called, follow the judge’s instructions; address them respectfully as “your honor,” and answer any questions they have for you truthfully.

Judges in Pennsylvania are not allowed to deny your name change on the basis of your gender identity; they can only do so if they find that you are attempting to change your name for an unlawful purpose or do not meet the legal requirements. If the judge grants your name change, they will sign an order changing your name and you can then request copies of the order from the prothonotary to be used in changing other forms of identification.

Folks who ask in one of the State College area group chats may be able to find a friend who’s willing to take them to Bellefonte to visit the prothonotary or attend hearings. This can be useful to anyone who lacks a car, or more generally as moral support.

Important Note: Performing a Lien Search in Other Counties

Depending on which counties you have lived in during the last five years, the requirement to have an official search performed for liens or judgments may prove the most difficult part of the name change process. Contacting your previous county’s prothonotary, clerk of court, or recorder of deeds as soon as you can to find out how to complete this process may be helpful.

Example: one of the working group authors was a previous resident of Los Angeles county. In order to have a lien / judgment search performed, they had to contact the Los Angeles County Recorder for property deeds by phone. They were pointed to an online system by LexisNexis, which required specific information to be entered into a form. The necessary information wasn’t publicly available other than by calling. Receiving an official document with the results of the search took several weeks.

The Pennsylvania Trans Equity Project provides an alternative example petition to that linked in step 1 (above). They also have a mentoring program that may include having someone attend court with you.

Their example petition suffers from a number of defects, including typos and unreadable text from low quality screenshots. The guide is outdated and contains some steps that are no longer valid (as of this writing), and it also tells you to visit Centre County Correctional for fingerprinting, which (as discussed above) is not necessary.

Updating Your Name Elsewhere

After you receive a court order changing your name, you will want to change it on other official sources, such as your driver’s license.

The first step is getting a new social security card. This is needed because many businesses and government offices treat it as a form of identification. This includes the REAL ID program; if you have a REAL ID you will not be able to update your drivers license until you receive a new social security card in the mail. You can apply for a replacement social security card on the same day you receive your name change order, and this will help expedite the rest of the process. You can begin an application online and make an appointment, or simply fill out the SS-5 form yourself and visit the office (at 901 University Dr) with your documents.
Once you have a new social security card (or right away if you don’t have REAL ID), you can update your driver’s license (or photo ID card). You will need to fill out the appropriate form and bring it to a driver’s license center. If you have not already done so, you can fill out a separate form and bring it with you to effect a gender marker change.
A new social security card will also allow you to update a U.S. passport. As of this writing, it is not possible to reliably acquire a passport with an accurate gender marker. This may change pending subsequent litigation, but the Supreme Court has stayed a ruling that previously allowed trans people to receive accurate passports.
Depending on your state of birth, you may be able to get a revised birth certificate. In Pennsylvania, a name change court order from the same state is sufficient. (Changing the sex designation requires a physician letter.)
Once you have the above completed, the remaining changes are not as difficult. The post office in State College is notorious for rejecting correctly addressed mail, so you might want to visit them in person (especially if your last name has changed). Don’t forget your vehicle registration, insurance, credit cards, utilities, bank, and voter registration.

Name Change for Penn State Students

Students who visit the Student Legal Services department, or fill out an intake form seeking assistance, can be walked through the process by an expert. Students who have changed their legal names this way have reported that the process is relatively straightforward, in that SLS will send you to be fingerprinted and file the petition for you (including paying the $155 fee for a name change petition). You just have to show up for your hearing.

Penn State students can also easily change the preferred name and gender identity used within the University system without having to change their legal name. See the transgender information page from the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity for more information.