Saeed Hamid

Stu­dent, Hugh Wood­ing Law School

What do we use dai­ly, but nev­er pay for?

What is tru­ly ours but came from some­where else? What is very per­son­al but shared with every­one? Our names.

A name is an im­por­tant tool used to iden­ti­fy some­one. How­ev­er, while we may iden­ti­fy our­selves with one name in its own form and spelling, the law is con­cerned with the man­ner in which we are legal­ly iden­ti­fi­able ie on our birth cer­tifi­cates, pass­ports or oth­er Gov­ern­ment-is­sued iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Prob­lems of­ten arise in ar­eas of law re­gard­ing con­tracts, the trans­fer­ring of prop­er­ty, and ad­min­is­ter­ing the af­fairs of the de­ceased–for ex­am­ple, where prop­er­ty in a will is to be giv­en to some­one whose name is spelt dif­fer­ent­ly on of­fi­cial doc­u­ments.

What to do?

Af­fi­davits vs Statu­to­ry De­c­la­ra­tions

While many tend to con­fuse these two doc­u­ments, the dif­fer­ence be­tween them is cru­cial in cor­rect­ing mis­spelt/in­ac­cu­rate names and know­ing when it is ap­pro­pri­ate to use one over the oth­er.

An af­fi­davit is a sworn state­ment of fact vol­un­tar­i­ly made by some­one un­der an oath or af­fir­ma­tion be­fore a com­mis­sion­er of af­fi­davits. It is used on­ly as sworn tes­ti­mo­ny or ev­i­dence in court pro­ceed­ings.

An af­fi­davit may there­fore be used to as­cer­tain a mis­spelt or in­cor­rect name in court pro­ceed­ings, such as where the court must de­ter­mine an is­sue aris­ing due to a mis­spelt name in a will.

A statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion, on the oth­er hand, is a writ­ten state­ment gen­er­al­ly used out­side of court, signed and de­clared to be true by an in­di­vid­ual be­fore a wit­ness to sub­stan­ti­ate a claim made by that in­di­vid­ual.

For ex­am­ple, where there is a de­fec­tive name on an of­fi­cial doc­u­ment, a statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion can be used to con­firm or ver­i­fy this er­ror with the rel­e­vant pub­lic of­fice.

As such, a statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion may be used to ver­i­fy a name in pub­lic of­fices such as the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion for the reg­is­tra­tion of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards where the name on the in­di­vid­ual's birth cer­tifi­cate is mis­spelt or in­cor­rect, or the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion in re­la­tion to the ap­pli­ca­tion for a new pass­port.

Deed polls

This is a deed; a form of le­gal con­tract which binds the per­son who signs it to a par­tic­u­lar course of ac­tion. Deed polls are com­mon­ly used for aban­don­ing your cur­rent name and alias­es for a new name. It can be used as a means of prov­ing the name-change once the deed poll is reg­is­tered in the Pro­to­col of Deeds af­ter be­ing prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed ie signed, dat­ed and hav­ing the sign­ing wit­nessed.

The course of ac­tion agreed to by the per­son chang­ing their name is to aban­don his/her for­mer name, use his/her new name on­ly and to re­quire all per­sons to ad­dress him/her by the new name.

Deed polls must be draft­ed and pre­pared by at­tor­neys-at-law, and once ex­e­cut­ed, it serves as le­gal proof that your name has been changed and the new name should be re­flect­ed in any sub­se­quent of­fi­cial doc­u­ment for which you may ap­ply.

This col­umn is not le­gal ad­vice. If you have a le­gal prob­lem, you should con­sult an at­tor­ney-at-law.