Village of New Paltz Hosts Name-Change Clinic

On Feb. 27, the Village of New Paltz and the Chosen Family Law Center collaborated to host a free name-change clinic at Village Hall. The primary purpose of the event was to guide attendants through the legal process of officially changing one’s documented name and gender, which can be a complex and difficult process to navigate alone.

The event began at 7 p.m., when attendees were promptly greeted by Senior Legal Director for Chosen Family Law Center Andy Izenson. They gave each attendant a Hudson Valley Name Change Clinic Packet, which entailed essential legal documents for changing one’s documented name and gender. Such documents included an Ulster County Application for Index Number, a Request for Judicial Intervention, a Name Change and/or Sex Designation Change Petition for Individual Adult and an Order Granting Name Change and/or Sex Designation Change for Individual Adult. There were also several documents that could be required in specific circumstances, such as a Spousal Consent Form for married individuals and a Poor Person Affidavit for those who may be unable to pay the New York Supreme Court $210 fee. Finally, the packet informed attendants of further required documents for an official name or gender change such as proof of identity and address, as well as providing instructions on where to bring the required paperwork upon completion.

After providing packets, Izenson then walked attendants through each included document, explaining which boxes should be filled or left blank and instructing attendants to write specific legal jargon in specific spaces. They were also available to notarize petitions, answer questions and provide external resources for those in need. The event, which lasted around an hour and a half, enabled attendants to complete most steps in the name and gender changing process, with the only step remaining for most being to bring their documents to their County Clerk and inform the office that they are filing a new name change petition.

The name-change clinic was planned by Village of New Paltz Deputy Mayor Alexandria Wojcik, who told The Oracle that she “had the idea before the election results came out the way they did, and then realized it was time to act on it.” 

“This is New Paltz. We’re supposed to be an LGBTQIA+ haven right?” said Wojcik. “People come to me and are like, I need this resource. I need help with it. A couple folks have come to me like, How do I change my name? And I’m like, you know what? Paperwork is daunting … So that’s why I reached out to Andy, knowing they’re a great advocate and part of the LGBTQ+ family and that we would be able to do this kind of thing.”

For Izenson, stepping up to Wojcik’s call was no problem, as it aligns directly with their passion and line of work. “This is the third name change clinic that I’ve done in the last couple of months, [because] a lot of people are scared they’re going to lose their ability to do this,” said Izenson. “This has been my life’s work for a decade now, trying to get these legal services to the people that need them … It’s really hard to have people come to me for help and to have to say, on this thing, I can’t help you — but we can still do name changes. We can do what we can. And the most important thing is that the members of our community that are coming to us for help, even when there’s stuff that we can’t do anymore, [they] know that they’re not alone.” 

Following the election, many federal resources for LGBTQ+ individuals have been taken down, such as numerous federal agencies removing their web pages regarding name changes. Many individuals fear for the stripping of queer rights, which is why Izenson noted that coming together is the one way the LGBTQ+ community can make it in an increasingly hostile political climate.

“The thing that the federal administration is trying to do when they erase us from documentation, when they make it so that we can’t have our identities reflected in our passports and our social security is telling us and everybody else that we don’t exist and we don’t matter. And the solution to that is to come together,” said Izenson. 

“We don’t get affirmation and care and meaning from the state … We get that from each other, and it’s our obligation to make sure that our community members know they can’t take anything away from us that we need … They really want to make it so that trans people don’t exist, but people have been trying to do that for as long as there have been humans, and they have always failed, because we’re great and we’re powerful, and we just keep going,” they added.

While any event rallying the LGBTQ+ community together is valuable, this particular name-change clinic was especially unique as it was coincidentally held on the “Twenty-first anniversary of the first same-sex weddings,” explained Wojcik. 

They were the first that were done in New York “as a civil disobedience act, a protest act … [and] an act of love too, right outside this building,” said Wojcik, referring to the mass wedding of Feb. 27, 2004, when Mayor Jason West wedded over two dozen same-sex couples in Peace Park, seven years prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York on July 24, 2011. The participants at the Peace Park mass wedding were there to fight for LGBTQ+ community’s right to exist, which has been an issue since long before and is still being fought for to this day, 21 years later.