If you’re an American, do you have a star at the top of your driver’s license? Great! Don’t know about Real ID, also known as Star Card? Do know but you’re putting off getting it? You might want to rethink that.
The Real ID Act was passed in 2005 as a response to the events on 9/11. Allowing each state to have its own requirements for identification, some strong and many weak, was deemed to present risks to homeland security. Starting May 7, 2025, a Real ID, a passport, or a few other specific forms of identification will be required for:
- Accessing certain federal facilities
- Boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft (even between US cities)
- Entering nuclear power plants
If all you have is a plain driver’s license you shouldn't wait until you have to do business in a government building or make an emergency flight before you get your Real ID. It may take longer than you think.
It can be simple. All you have to do is go to the DMV (take a number), show them some documents, and get your old driver’s license or ID replaced with a new one that has a star at the top to show that you’ve proven who you are. Sound easy? Sometimes it is. My state calls for showing the DMV a social security card, a birth certificate, and a couple of utility bills to prove residency. Easy peasy.
But sometimes it’s an adventure, I discovered. As a married woman, my name is not the same as on my birth certificate. I needed to come back with a marriage license. Due to a quirk in state law when I was married, we didn’t have one, so I had to download a request form, run to the bank to have it notarized, and send it to the county where I was married. (Fortunately the notary accepted my unstarred driver’s license as proof of ID.)
A couple weeks later I took my marriage license back to the DMV (take a number) with all my other ID to finish the process. But wait! The woman at the DMV insisted that my married name as specified on my marriage certificate, the name that was me for most of my life, was wrong. (She was pretty peeved about it, too, like I was trying to pull something. I had the awful feeling she’d like to see me deported to my birth place. Do they even deport people to Cleveland?)
I married 40 years ago when the county clerk asked a bride how she would style her married name. I chose my name and the county clerk said it was fine. And it was fine, until Real ID. Now there are only two legal ways for a woman to style her married name: birth certificate first, birth certificate middle, and either birth certificate last name or husband’s last name. If a bride has taken her maiden name as her middle name, or has dropped or shortened her birth first or middle name, or hyphenated her maiden and married last names, she can run into trouble.
I ran in trouble. My marriage certificate said that when Girasolius Mayweed Smith, the name on my birth certificate, married John Jones, she became Girasol Jones. The DMV could accept only Girasolius Mayweed Jones, never mind what the marriage certificate said. But it says Girasol Jones on my social security card! That’s proof, isn’t it? Well, maybe, the woman at DMV said doubtfully. You’ll need to talk to them.
Off to the Social Security office (take a number). I asked the agent there if she would please help me to explain to the DMV that my name is what my Social Security card says it is. The woman snatched my card from my hands and said, “This is wrong. This should say Girasolius Mayweed Jones. I will fix it.” I snatched it back and said “Nope! Thanks anyway! I’ll fix it.”
(Think that because you’re a man or a single woman this couldn’t happen to you? It still might. If your birth certificate says John Quincy Jones but your other forms of ID say John Jones or John Q. Jones, then depending on your state and whether your DMV agent got a decent cup of coffee that morning, you might still have a name problem.)
In my case, I could have agreed that my name is the one that they insisted was correct. But that wouldn’t match every legal document I’d written for all of my married life: tax filings, insurance cards, and real estate transactions — all of it. My social security card would have to be changed and my passport wouldn’t be right. And besides, it irked me to think that the DMV could change my perfectly good name.
The passport was almost the solution. It had my name on it: Girasol Jones. Unlike a social security card, a passport is final proof of ID for Real ID. Alas, mine was out of date and only a few weeks from the date after which it could not be renewed. With a long wait time to get renewals processed I would lose it if I didn’t renew immediately. If I missed the deadline and had to reapply from scratch, what would they need to assure my identity? Off to get a passport photo and print passport renewal forms.
While I waited to see if I’d get a new passport or miss the deadline, I filed for a legal name change to get it over with. Off to the courthouse (take a number). The clerk there told me, “Good thing you’re doing this now. The deadline is coming and all the folks with hyphenated names don’t even know they’re gonna be in a world of hurt.” Once paperwork was filed and I had a court date, it was off to the local newspaper office to run an ad for a month saying that Girasolius Mayweed Jones — a person no one had ever heard of — was changing her name to Girasol Jones, me. No one objected.
The judge started proceedings with “State your legal name.” I finally said, “That’s the question. I’m not even sure.” He laughed, I explained, and I left with his ruling that I am, at last, who I’ve always been. I took the legal form to the DMV and got a star card. A few weeks later the passport came with no hassle at all.
So six weeks and $400 later (document fees, court filing fees, and newspaper ad) I am who I always was and I can prove it with my star card and a passport too.
Some people slide through this process in an hour, of which the first 50 minutes are spent waiting for their number to be called. Then again, I’ve heard stories that make my little adventure sound like a walk in the park. The point is, if you haven’t done this, don’t wait until the last minute when you’re at the end of a long line of last minute filers or worse, standing at the airport security gate without enough ID to get to your flight. The Homeland Security Real ID site has info and links to your state’s own procedures to get you started.
