Oh! Amazing story from the name change hearing.
So I managed to find a pro-bono lawyer for trans name changes through local support group. They were really awesome and sweet. It was the first one for the woman who wound up leading on mine. I had initially contacted a guy who had been doing the probono work but his load was fairly heavy, however he knew his colleague was interested in getting into doing them. They covered everything! Court fees, announcement in paper, etc. It was truly a blessing as my finances are still very rough. Mostly though they gave me courage and guidance through a terrifying thing.
That isn't even the end of it though!
So beforehand my lawyer had mentioned to me to put me at ease she found out she knew the judge, and that she (the judge) was very active in the LGBT community. (She herself is gay. I mean, it's the middle of Atlanta. Almost everyone is.
) So something really cool happened. When I was called up, she stopped for a minute and called my lawyer up separately. I started to panic a little bit honestly. So they do some writing, then things resume. As we leave, my lawyer told me what happened. Basically, the judge had her write in an extra line on the court order that let's me modify birth certificate too, when otherwise would not have been able to without surgery (at least not easily)!
What I didn't know is that the judge had actually just won a GA Stonewall Bar Association award
for this very thing! She apparently has gone out of her way to facilitate transgender name changes in the courts here. I felt truly blessed, and lucky to be able to be where I am now. This would have been a radically different experience anywhere else in the state, and possibly even just with a different judge here.
