My question involves name change laws in the State of: Maryland

My wife had changed her name (regret) when she became a naturalized United States Citizen. She decided to change her name back to her original name. She has been for the past 2 years using her original name anyway (on all credit cards/drivers license etc...). We filed the appropriate paperwork to changer her name with the Circuit Court within our county. My wife purchased plane tickets (using her original name, not the one she changed it to) around the same time I was putting in the paperwork. Her flight is in June. She is going back to China for vacation. The tickets are around $4,000.

My thought was this would be pretty straight forward and take a few weeks. However I'm hearing it can take between 2 - 3 months!!!!! When going out that far it appears we should be fine, but my concern is that it will sit and sit and we won't get a notice from the court. Our goal is to have the notice in time so that she can apply for her U.S. passport as well. She will need for the passport to be in her new name. The naturalization document contains the old name. We will attach the court order (name change) with the nat document when we apply for passport. Still if we get the court order for name change in time, we should be fine if we expedite the passport. They just published the legal notice in the local paper yesterday.

I contacted the Circuit Court Clerk regarding this concerns. She informed me that we can file a Motion to Expedite the case. I'm thinking I should go ahead and do this anyway (for insurance). She indicates that they don't have a template or form for this. Based on my research it appears I can simply use a generic legal motion document. I can list the reasons 1, 2, 3. The main reason would be the replacement cost for the plane tickets etc... Also the delay since her mother is sick.

My wife's name change case is quite simple. She not changing it due to divorce, minor child etc... She's even reverting her name back to her original birth name she had been using all along. Does anyone know the success in this. Also does anyone have a example template of a name expedite motion I could use?