The unbelievable events of changing my legal name - Part II
This is Part II of the events around changing my name. To read Part I, click on this link
"Honey" my wife says to me.
I've lost track of time. How long had I been on that bench? Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty?
"Honey" my wife says again. "We can't stay here all day."
While truer words have never been spoken, once I get up, it's over. I'm walking out still as my deadname in the eyes of the law. It was so humiliating. No one should have to out themselves with public notice to change their name. Especially not while there are hate groups that look for transgender people to target.
"It's time to go" she says. I agree, I get up, and my feet are absolutely killing me from the heels I'm wearing.
For a moment, let's pretend that my deadname was Michael (it wasn't, but this will work as a reasonable proxy). Someone named Michael will usually go by Mike or Michael. For years, my youngest has been calling me the equivalent to my deadname of what Mikey is to Michael. It was a way to cut up the room and border on being disrespectful, which is why it was a perfect way for her to refer to me. She had continued to use this with me, even after I transitioned. Because the equivalent to Mikey was never my name and it's a really cheeky thing for a kid to call a parent. It's leaning across the line of inappropriate but still anchored to the correct side of that line in ways that only someone like my youngest can pull off. So as we are walking to the car, she wants to lighten the mood and calls me the Mikey equivalent. This joke will never land the same again. It's sad really because this was something we shared for years and it was so often a way for her to make the room laugh. On the walk back to the car, I let her know that the name needs to be retired. She's surprised by that, but of course understands why I now can't hear anything even resembling my dead name. She hasn't called me the Mikey equivalent since.
Walking to the car, I realized that I previously preferred to not hear my deadname. I already know it's not going to be a preference any more. Now it's going to be an imperative. I am so fucking done with ever hearing that name again to describe me.
I also realize that we were going to stop in front of the courthouse and get our first pictures as a family as myself. Obviously that's out. It's one more thing that has been taken from me with this ruling. My oldest is a junior in high school and will be going off to college soon. There are so many pictures that I'm not comfortable having out there for public consumption of our family - Christmas pictures, church photos, and a picture of us with the Hollywood sign in the background to name a few. This opportunity to capture what should have been one of the happiest moments in my life was now taken from me too.
We hit the car and my wife starts the half hour drive home. I call my friend, the lawyer, who told me the waiver would go through 49 of 50 times. You can tell he feels like shit when he hears what happened today, but as a lawyer, he's seen that the legal system has this element. Without getting into case details, he tells me that he's seen judges rule in ways that completely ignore the law, and they've told him to appeal the case. We're talking for a few minutes about how brutal our legal system can be when it breaks down. Then he does something that he hasn't done before or since. He says "I'm sorry (deadname)". I'm glad I know him really well because my immediate reaction was to burst out laughing. We are talking about how the state blocked me from changing my legal name to Veronica, so of course his subconscious makes the connection to me not being Veronica and grabs the previous name. It was a moment of levity on the way home and the absurdity of it brought my spirts up a notch and I let him go.
We finish the drive home and my kid is in the back seat auditioning new potential names to call me that will be both biting and affirming by only looking for names that begin with the letter v. It was more absurd affirmation. We also had a party planned for family that evening and I'm already texting the group that the party is canceled. I had an appointment at the DMV for later today to get my Driver's License changed and I obviously have to cancel that. I'm not doing well at all. I need to start doing research when I get home on how I get here and what my options are.
So I start doing research. I find the information about the state law first and where I heard about it - from my state representative in the Illinois House of Representatives. I find this notice and yes, there should have been no issues with the court proceeding. My state rep has a spot on their website to give feedback. So I give them feedback on what happened with me in court and how the law did not work as intended. Following that, I start sending messages to places like work colleagues so that messages congratulating me on the name change don't start rolling in.
Next, I do research on this judge, because this outcome was ignorant at best. The good news is that this judge was elected. The bad news is it will take until 2026 until the judge is up for reelection. As I dig in more, the judge had the recommendation when they were elected in 2020 of a lot of other judges in the county. This makes sense. I live in one of what's known as the "collar counties" in the Chicagoland area. These are the five counties around Chicago and Chicago's county, Cook County. Historically the city of Chicago and Cook County was very Democratic and the five collar counties voted predominantly Republican. In the first part of this century, the Democrats had started to make inroads. However, since the Republican party's embrace of Trump in 2016 and thus the open embrace of racists and bigots, the collar counties now only have Democratic representation in Washington and there are many more Democrats in state and county elections. But many of the longstanding institutions, like the court system, will have party affiliations in line with where these counties were before Trump because the court system takes a long time to change. So, of course in 2020, my judge was endorsed by the entrenched and former Republican judges, even though those judge's political party weren't listed with that endorsement. In fact, my judge went on record saying that they don’t believe that judges should have to declare a party when they run for election and that their earlier record should stand for itself. Of course this is what the judge thinks and says because they want to win elected office while disavowing their party affiliation. That's how she got elected.
Next I look at my email and see that there's an auto response from my State Rep's website, but there's also a second response. It's personal response from my State Rep, sent less than half an hour after I submitted this form on their website. In the response, the Rep states how very sorry they are about my experience and asked if I'd like their help in getting the ACLU involved. She would also involve Illinois State Rep Cassidy, a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a champion for all things LGBTQ+ in Illinois State law. HOLY CRAP!. An elected politician responding this fast? When I sent the note to the state rep, it was my hope that at some point we could get a call together so that I could tell them that the law was not working as planned and why so that the law could be addressed. The offer of help IN LESS THAN THIRTY MINUTES was so much more than what I was seeking. But of course if my rep wants to use their position as an elected official to bring in the ACLU, I would be foolish not to take advantage of that. I pause to gather my thoughts, and respond. Of course I want their help. With that said, anytime we are bringing in a new person or resource moving forward, I need to always approve this before it happens. This is critical as the wider the circle gets, the more my humiliating day spreads and in the process I get outed to more and more people. I just don't want there to be so much momentum that I don't have any say in getting outed. (note: at some point I'll come out and name this phenomenal State Rep, but it's a little too specific of a geographical location to give about me - but saying what rep's district I'm in would be way too specific of a geographical location for this Substack site).
I post in a few places of what happened today - Facebook, Instagram, and the like. My comments and DMs start lighting up. Messages of support. Disbelief in the legal process. I have one friend, we'll call her Anna, that was very insistent that we connect right away. Well, I have to listen to her. In 2014, Anna got married in the first month that same sex marriage became legal by state law in Illinois. Prior, she had a civil union from Vermont. I remember her posts from the twelve months prior to her wedding. During that time, Anna and her wife were out demonstrating for their rights. While doing so they were also the most gentle, kindest, patient people. Meanwhile self-identified "Christians" were saying the most vile shit about and to them. She posted footage from demonstration after demonstration and it was amazing how the lesbian couple was acting like Christ, and the self-identified Christians were acting worse than the Pharisees. Despite the Illinois law changing that legalized same sex marriage in Illinois in June of 2014, the county where Anna lived was refusing to issue them a marriage license. She needed to get help to get the law enforced including from elected officials and all the way up to the Attorney General of Illinois. At her wedding, she played a 10+ minute video of all that her and her wife went through legally so that she could be married and it's still the most moving thing I've ever seen at a wedding. My wife and I walked into a courthouse and walked out with a marriage license and got married, but Anna had to wait over a decade and fight for a year to get that right. One of the people she got help from was a transgender lawyer who had successfully litigated to the Supreme Court. I remember my wife and I talking to her at the wedding.
Anna was insistent that I talk to her friend the lawyer, and with that background how could I not? We talk for an hour. We were just talking at this point. She was a little confused as to why I was going through such great lengths to avoid public notice, and this makes sense because of how much more she had to go through decades ago and how the process has become so much better today. With that said, she talked me through a potential interesting strategy that could be tried and was doing some on the fly research to confirm this would be a valid strategy. It certainly seemed like this judge was the issue. The strategy she outlined would be four to six months to accomplish. The first step would be to move to dismiss my name change without prejudice (I think it was without prejudice anyway, if it's with prejudice that's a memory mix-up on my part). Then we could file new name change paperwork with a new motion to waive public notice. Then, once the case is assigned, we ask for a new judge within the first few days of assignment, which is a right. This would not technically be judge shopping because the judge would have never ruled on my initial name change request, just on a motion attached to that request. I'd just have to pay these court fees (over $300). If I wanted to hire this lawyer, she would help me, and it would not be cheap. She also said that she'd likely just submit the notice if it were her. It was a fantastic plan and it helped me to know that there was at least one option I had to avoid public notice.
As I reflected on this option in the coming days, I realized what I'd do to ensure there would not be an issue if I pursued this strategy. On my name change petition I was changing my first name to Veronica. However, I was keeping both my middle and last names and I wanted to keep it that way. My middle name is Cory, and it stems from being a family last name. It was also my grandpa's middle name and my father's middle name. It's also my youngest daughter's first of two middle names. Keeping a generational name that is used for all genders and having me be the link between male ancestors and female descendants is so fucking poetic. Of course I want to keep my middle name. But this actually points to what I'd do if I choose this path. Both my kids have two middle names, so if I need to withdraw and refile, I would add a second middle name as a marker of this process taking filing two motions and so that I'm not withdrawing and refiling the exact same motion.
Also in the meantime, my state rep's office starts putting things into motion. They loop in Rep Cassidy's office and their contacts at the ACLU. The ACLU responds and wants to bring in additional help. They want to include someone from Chicago House who was instrumental in getting the current state law crafted and can speak to intent. Additionally they want to loop in ITJP, a non-profit that as a core part of their mission assists transgender people with their name change free of charge. I respond quickly to approve of these additional folks being brought in.
ITJP responds. They say most judges have been granting the waivers with the change in state law without issue. Then, they state that they have had a few issues with specific counties and name the county I live in as where they have seen the most problems. They state that a judge told them to appeal their decision and that they don't see being transgender a sufficient enough reason in and of itself to grant hardship despite the law saying that no evidence needs to be proactively submitted. Then they state that they have had some success with motions to reconsider, but if it's in the county I live in, there would need to be more to the motion than just being trans for it to be successful because the law allows for judicial discretion.
I had despondent moments during the day. Having friends sending messages of support, being able to talk and vent about the experience, and having an element of hope through responses from my friend Anna's lawyer and my State Rep's office allowed me to be functional. But as evening falls and we're into the time that should have been having the party for finally being seen as myself in the eyes of the law, I start fading. I could have handled it if I had made a paperwork mistake to get here. But this was so out of left field and so unfair. Yes, many folks before me have had to file public notice before. But it's so awful and I was so unprepared for this. That the judge seems to rule this way for everyone seeking a name change is appalling. I feel the walls closing in on me and I know I'm spiraling. That was among the longest nights of my life and I had periods of restlessness and waking during the night. Things were very grim, and I was in active ideation for so much of it. I'm glad that we don't have anything in my house that would have allowed me to act on that ideation. These systems that expect judges to be able to use discretion aren't built for people who have traditionally been outside the system. Trans people seems to have obstacle after obstacle placed in front of us. It's the law of probability that we won't clear all obstacles smoothly. I woke up very early that next day, and I was really struggling.
Part III will go into the day after and the path forward that emerged.