Getting married: the paperwork nobody puts on the registry

Are you ready to get married?

Not the dress, the venue or the seating chart. The other part. The part where two people who have each spent years building their own pile of accounts, policies and paperwork become one household, and slowly discover what the other one has been keeping in that shoebox.

It is one of the nicer reasons to get organized. Here is what tends to come up.

The marriage certificate itself

After the wedding, the certificate becomes one of those documents that gets asked for more often than expected: name changes, benefits, insurance, sometimes a mortgage application. Do you both know where the certified copy is? Do you know how to request another one if it goes missing? The office that issued it is the place to ask.

If a name is changing

A name change is a project of its own, and the steps and order differ by state and by agency. What does not change is the shape of the list. A new name usually needs to reach:

• Social Security and the agency that issues driver's licenses
• Passport records, especially with travel coming up
• Banks, credit cards, loans and investment accounts
• Employer payroll and benefits
• Insurers, doctors, the pharmacy
• Utilities, subscriptions and every login with a name on it

Each agency's own website explains what it asks for. The useful part to keep track of on your side is which ones are done, and where the updated documents ended up.

Two sets of records, one household

Couples organize money and paperwork in all sorts of ways: everything shared, everything separate, or somewhere in between. There is no single right way, and plenty of people change their approach over the years. Whatever the setup, a few questions help:

• Accounts. Does each of you know which accounts the other holds, and where?
• Insurance. Which policies does the household have now, and does anyone want to look again at them with the new situation in mind?
• Beneficiaries. Which accounts and policies name someone, and does that list still reflect what each of you wants? The provider can show what is on file.
• Contacts. Who is each person's doctor, employer, tax preparer?
• Documents. Where are both sets of birth certificates, passports and Social Security cards kept now?

Questions about how marriage affects taxes, property or estate documents in your state are good ones for a tax professional or an attorney. Knowing what you each have, and where it is, makes those conversations much shorter.

The conversation, not just the list

The most useful outcome is often not a document at all. It is the moment each person can say, "if you ever need my information, here is where it is". That is a kind of trust that does not make it onto the registry but turns out to matter a great deal.

It does not need to happen in one evening. One drawer, one account list, one conversation at a time counts.

Ready for the life you are building

The MARRIAGE READY page lists the things couples most often go looking for after the wedding. For the household that grows from here, FAMILY READY covers records for everyone you look after.