Here's Where I Trash the $%($ Out of Manulife Banking | Manulife Bank | Discussion forum

I feel the pain, my dad passed away and had altered his last name by 1 character and to top it off stopped using his first name and substituted John.

What a bloody mess, the death certificate had so many names on it it made me cringe but that was the only way I could get everyone to accept it.

It took 9 different copies of the death certificate before all the financial institutions accepted it.

To the OP.... I feel your pain!!

Don't cause yourself and others problems. If one is going to adopt a different name for legal purposes, then one should do a proper name change.

As one relative found out, land title offices will not accept the power of attorney when the donor's name on the power of attorney doesn't match the name of the registered owner of the property. Donor can no longer sign a new power of attorney legally because of diminished mental capacity.

Good luck too in getting a passport in one's married name if one's name on the marriage certificate doesn't exactly match one's legal name before marriage!

It's a simple process to do a legal name change. After that, no hassles in changing all FI accounts over with a Change of Name Cerificate. (and even get a new birth certificate with your new legal name, which took nearly a year ).

I did this 25+ years ago to change my first name to my middle name and added the name I preferred to be called as my first name. Easy peasy.
The hard part was getting a new SIN issued with your now new legal name ---> which then would be used to change the name on your CPP records, etc.

On the topic of name conflicts, here's another situation....

My birth name is in a different language. I came to Canada when I was a baby. The federal government accepts and recognizes translations of ones name to an English equivalent and will place that on your documents. I have used my English name all my life and is on all my legal documents, with all levels of governments, banks, mortgages, land titles, insurance policies, court documents, etc, etc, etc. and on my Canadian passport, except my Canadian citizenship card (note these last 2 have "different" names BUT issued by the Federal government).

One day I decided to try to take advantage of the enhanced driver's license (EDL) option, issued by the Provincial government, instead of renewing my passport for a trip my family was taking. They requested proof of citizenship, so I brought in my citizenship card. When they recorded my info for the EDL they chose to "update" my name on my driver's license.

It took a moment for me to realize the implication. Driver's license is used to confirm my identity in so many places. But now there would be a mismatch between all my life's documentation and I would have the HUGE hassle of updating ALL my documents.... or having to do a legal "name change" back to my English name JUST to satisfy the Provincial government, which I did not want to do., nor had the time to do.

I then had to fight for a long time, escalating to managers, and so on (who for the longest time just refused to make the correction claiming it was already in the system and could not be changed) to get the Ministry of Transportation to change back my records to my English name that is legally recognized by ALL OTHER institutions and governments, and then undo and cancel the EDL request, because at that point they refused to recognize my English name as my legal name, even though my passport showed that as my legal name.

How a Provincial office has a different standard as to what is accepted as a legal name vs the Federal government on a matter of immigration and border control, where one accepts translated names and the other does not, for a matter that you would think falls under the purview of the Federal government, is beyond me.

That was a very harrowing experience. Be very mindful of the implications of name discrepancies on legal documents.

harbottle said
It's a simple process to do a legal name change. After that, no hassles in changing all FI accounts over with a Change of Name Cerificate. (and even get a new birth certificate with your new legal name, which took nearly a year ).

Well that is a huge contradiction if I ever saw one... "...simple process...", "... no hassles...", "... get a new birth certificate...", "took nearly a year". oh boy...

As per my story, a name change can have HUGE implications. The more documentation you have out there, the more complicated it gets. The later in life you do this, the greater likelihood of that.

smayer97 said

Well that is a huge contradiction if I ever saw one... "...simple process...", "... no hassles...", "... get a new birth certificate...", "took nearly a year". oh boy...

As per my story, a name change can have HUGE implications. The more documentation you have out there, the more complicated it gets. The later in life you do this, the greater likelihood of that.

It is not a big issue if one has the legal documents to link the names together. One will have the name change certificate that does just that if one does a formal legal name change. The provincial marriage certificate also does that in many provinces.

Issues arise because people don't have a recognized legal document that links the names together.

The friend with the marriage certificate problem didn't realize there was a problem until a few years after her husband passed away. Apparently, she and her husband never needed a provincial marriage certificate before. Perhaps, the banks used to accept those commemorative marriage certificates issued by the church or a copy of the record of marriage that the priest signed and sent in to the provincial government. Not anymore!

Technically, she has no legal document that she was married to him all those years!

mebe said
…. I just entered transit number and institution number for EQ and used void EQ online cheque image.
Easy and quick setup and all online. My Manulife Debit card and pin # arrived yesterday and today (pin arrived today).

Glad I didn't need to mail a cheque to link my EQ account.

Good to know that Manulife Bank will accept that simulated void cheque image from EQ Bank as confirmation of the EQ Bank account.

smayer97 said

harbottle said
It's a simple process to do a legal name change. After that, no hassles in changing all FI accounts over with a Change of Name Cerificate. (and even get a new birth certificate with your new legal name, which took nearly a year ).

Well that is a huge contradiction if I ever saw one... "...simple process...", "... no hassles...", "... get a new birth certificate...", "took nearly a year". oh boy...

As per my story, a name change can have HUGE implications. The more documentation you have out there, the more complicated it gets. The later in life you do this, the greater likelihood of that.  

The process for a new birth certificate was straight forward. It took about a year of waiting for processing. In the meantime, the old birth certificate was valid accompanied with the Change of Name Certificate. i didn't want to carry 2 pieces of paper.