Costs to Change Your Name in California are for court filing, serving required notices, and preparing all your Petition forms.  All 3 are incurred when you start the process.

Your local Superior Court will charge $435.00 at the window when you file your Petition.  San Francisco and Riverside currently charge $450.00.  The Courts change their filing rates when they need to, which has been all too often in recent years, so you’ll need to check just before you go to file to know the exact charge for your Petition.

After you file your Petition, you must serve public notice of your intention to Legally Change Your Name in California (see California Civil Code §1277(a)) by placing an ad in an approved newspaper for your area.  Your court can provide a list of the approved newspapers.  You will have to pay whichever newspaper you choose an advertising charge to run the ad.  That charge varies a lot, depending on the area and the paper, between $80 or less up to $500.00.  You should shop for the best price, so long as you use one of the approved papers.

If you’re a parent or guardian, Petitioning for your Child or ward, you are likely to also have to pay for costs to serve notice of the Petition on certain family members, depending on your individual circumstances.  This is done either through Private Process Servers, U.S. Mail, or other people meeting certain qualifications, depending on your specific circumstances.  These charges may be $35.00/ea, or more, for Private Process Serving or just the cost of postage.  The particular conditions that may apply to you are also found in the California Civil Code §1277 (a).

You can complete the Petition forms yourself or, if you want to have a lawyer or an authorized service prepare your Petition for you, they will charge a fee for their services.  A Lawyer may have a flat fee or may charge an hourly fee, and different lawyers will have charges that vary between several hundred dollars up to $1,000 or more.  Non-Lawyer authorized services, such as Paralegals or Registered Legal Document Assistants usually charge a flat fee for Name Change Petitions varying between $100.00 on up to $500.00.

If you use EZNameChange.com to prepare your Petition for you, we charge $115.00 and you’ll get ALL the Petition forms properly completed, detailed instructions on the sequence of activities to complete your Legal Name Change, a contact list for the Newspapers of General Circulation in your area, and a checklist for  people/companies/agencies/government offices to contact for integrating your New Name into important places.

When you’re ready, we are!