Adoptive Parent discourages adoptee from using legal surnam

January 15, 2012

Good day,

Let me give a quick background before I move on to a question that, hopefully, someone might be able to answer.

I'm a Filipina and was adopted by the sister of my grandma when I was about 9 (in the Philippines). Her husband is Dutch and the adoption was processed in the Philippines. I went to live in Holland right after that and received my passport from Holland. I then moved back to the Philippines with my adoptive mom.

I wasn't exactly a good kid back then and unfortunate circumstances has led me to being brought back to my biological dad (mom already passed away). I was in 12th grade back then. I've been using Surname A (Adopted). My adoptive mother strongly insists that I do not use Surname A anymore, and out of respect and shame (from the troubles I've caused her), I agreed to it. I was 17 back then by the way.

However, when I got my first job, I had to get a birth certificate here and I had to produce my court order for me to get my 'new' birth certificate. My adoptive mother wasn't that cooperative. However, I was lucky enough to get my 'biological' birth certificate after verbally proving that that was indeed me. All my government IDs are in Surname B (Biological), EXCEPT for my tax ID. It has surname A. And now it's causing problems because when I updated my info to Surname B, the system generated a new ID (which is illegal for someone to have 2 IDs).

Here comes the question and thank you for your patience :eyebrows: . Can I continue using Surname B even though we didn't go through any court procedure to have that legally done? She only made an affidavit of turning in the responsibility to my biological dad, but didn't mention anything about surnames.

I don't really have a problem not using Surname A anymore, but I just want to clear up my papers and documents here and it's giving me a lot of hassle.

Any ideas will be highly appreciated. Thank you.