Adoption and Social Security

It's been an interesting few months when it comes to S's Social Security card.

When S was born, the uber-efficient hospital sent her information to the Social Security Administration. Two weeks later, S's birthmom got her SS card. She told us about it last June, and our agency's lawyer said we could do a name change once the adoption was finalized. Great.

S's adoption was finalized in October, and we received her new birth certificate with her new name in December-ish. At that point we started the hunt for S's SS card. We knew it was either with her birthmom or with the agency. We figured since S already had a number, it was going to be easier just to change the name on the card. Ha!

Well, we worked with one social worker in one office, and S's birthmom worked with another social worker in another office. So they had to coordinate to find out where the card was (S's birthmom had sent it to them months ago) and how to get it to us. And they had to make sure it was OK with S's birthmom, who by the way was the one who told us about it. Minor chaos ensued.

We finally got her original SS card last week. Which meant a trip to the SSA office near us to get a name change. I was not looking forward to this. When we got married, I went to an office near us. It was old, crowded, and had a single person processing everyone. One person! I ended up waiting about 3.5 hours for a 20-second transaction. I was hoping for better this time.

The first sign that things would go better was the new location. It turns out there's an office even closer to us, and it was lovely. Huge, bright, clean, and there were only 3 people waiting. Awesome. After 15 minutes we were called up to the window and I inundated the poor lady with every piece of adoption paperwork we had in our possession. 10 minutes later we had everything done, and S will get a new card in the mail soon.

Bonus: the security guard there said S was the best behaved baby he'd seen in that office in 10 years.