Most states don’t require a name change through the courts. Believe it or not, you can just start using a new name, and it’s perfectly legal in most places.
He would have been required to disclose other names on his application to the Illinois Bar, along with any all all non-traffic offenses, no matter how minor. Which is probably why, like all documentation of his life, he refuses to release his application.
Exactly. That’s what I did when I was about to graduate from college in Pennsylvania, and wanted my diploma to show the name I’d been using since I was 11 years old. Looked into the legal procedures and found I didn’t need to do anything at all. Had no trouble changing Social Security card, driver’s license, passport, credit cards, etc. I think maybe I had to write a statement asserting what name I’d been using and get it notarized, to get the process rolling. I imagine it would be a bit more complicated now.
In my case I was keeping the last name I’d always had, changing my middle name to what had been my legal first name, and changing my first name to what I’d been called since 6th grade. The main intents of the law are, I think, 1) to allow women to change back and forth between “maiden” and husband’s surnames without legal procedures, and to make it easier to nail anyone who enters into contracts under a phony name (perhaps one they actually use in some settings) and tries to renege by pointing out that it’s not their legal name. In Pennsylvania, your legal name is whatever name you normally use.
Not exactly - it may be different in various states, but having researched it for someone who did it, there are two ways. A court way (money, lawyer) and a public disclosure way - a special form has to be filled out, notarized, and a certain type of announcement sent to newspapers for a specific number of times. Then on all documents/papers/forms/bills/official anything you have to use the new name, and if you have a passport, it takes (or did in the early 90s in CA) five years, IIRC, to be able to use the new name.