NEWS / Florida woman denied Real ID over missing marriage certificate

A 69-year-old veteran has been denied a Real ID by the State of Florida, where she resides. The problem is caused by a missing marriage certificate that is needed to prove her last name change from her maiden name at birth to the one she uses now. She is not alone in facing this issue, which has disproportionately affected women who are or had been married, particularly seniors.

“I had everything except a copy of my first marriage license from 50 years ago,” Jane Schleppenbach was quoted by Fox News 19 as stating. “Don’t change your name. Because if anything gets messed up, I look at it kind of as harassment.”

Schleppenbach was married at the age of 18 in the State of Colorado, but it appears that no marriage certificate or license had ever been filed, meaning that her marriage had never been technically registered. She combed military records and county archives stored on microfilm, but to no avail.

“I called the county, and they looked in their microfilm and they didn’t have it. They didn’t have anything like that,” she lamented.

Without the necessary proof of name change, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which outsources State ID and driver license issuance to County Tax Collectors, cannot allow Schleppenbach to get a Real ID bearing her current last name.