On January 17, 2025, Governor Whitmer signed House Bills 5300 and 5302 which streamlined Michigan’s name change laws for people seeking to change their names in circumstances other than marriage.¹ The laws will go into effect on April 2, 2025. This article explains what will stay the same, what will change and how we anticipate these changes to impact Michiganders seeking to change their names.

Carrying over from the former law, every person seeking a name change must be a resident of the county in which they are filing for one year and affirm that they are not seeking to do so with ‘fraudu­lent intent’.² In addition, previously, individuals over the age of 22 were required to submit fingerprints and complete a FBI background check at a cost ranging from $45 to over $83.³ If the petitioner filed an application with a criminal background, Michigan law required a petitioner overcome a presumption that they were doing so with fraudulent intent.⁴ Because the law indicated that a court could not act until the results of the background check had been provided to the court, this process added months to the processing times.⁵ With the new law, fingerprinting and formal background checks are no longer required by statute.⁶ Instead, petitioners must disclose in their initial petition whether or not they have criminal conviction or pend­ing charges.⁷ In addition, the new statute explicitly permits courts to confirm the petitioner’s records by reviewing ICHAT or the LIEN sys­tem, which will contain all nonpublic criminal records including that have been expunged, juvenile records, convictions from other states and outstanding charges.⁸ Importantly however, the revisions have done away with the prior presumption of fraudulent intent simply because someone has a criminal record.⁹

Although many states do not require a hearing for name change petitions, Michigan has always required a hearing to grant a name change.¹⁰ However, for adults seeking a name change, the new law permits a name change to be granted without a hearing.¹¹

Under the new law, if a court decides to move forward with a hearing, the petitioner still must publish notice.¹² In the law’s former iteration, all petitioners were required to publish the hearing date with the petitioner’s chosen and former or “dead” name, unless courts granted a request to waive the publication requirement.¹³ The conditions for waiving the publication were generalized, allow­ing courts discretion to broadly (or narrowly) interpret the grounds for waiving the requirement.¹⁴ Where publication occurred (or it wasn’t waived), in the hundreds of name change petitions our co­alition has filed we have never seen an objection lodged from the public, petitioners routinely paid more than $100 per petition to comply with the requirement.¹⁵ This process added time and addi­tional paperwork for the courts and petitioners.

However, the new law will allow petitioners to receive a “presump­tion of good cause to waive the publication” if petitioners seek a name change because of the individual is a victim of an assaultive crime, domestic violence, harassment, stalking, human trafficking¹⁶ or to affirm one’s gender.¹⁷ We anticipate that the State Court Administrator’s Office will create a form for those that seek a name change for these statutorily designated reasons so that the Courts will quickly and seamlessly waive publication. For all others whose petitions are set for hearing and do not qualify for or seek a waiver, the publication requirement remains.¹⁸

With the elimination of the background check, publication and hearing requirement, name changes in Michigan should be stream­lined and could be granted in a matter of days or weeks rather than months. Once a petitioner’s final order is granted a petitioner can update names with an employer, bank, and treating physicians. Once the order is certified by the County Clerk, petitioners can legally begin the process to change additional identity documents, such as their social security card, driver’s license and passport.

The simplification of this name change process has been the goal for many community members, activists and attorneys working in this space, and is the culmination of several years of incremental changes and work leading up to this statutory update.

The authors are part of a larger coalition of activists and attor­neys who have coordinated a name change clinic at Corktown Health in Detroit, Michigan for low-income transgender individuals in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties since 2019. Together, with pro bono attorneys from law firms and corporate legal depart­ments, it has served over 300 clients.