Mississippi Name Change Laws: Chancery Court and What Remains Unresolved

Mississippi is a genuine outlier in this guide, not because its underlying law is unusual, but because the state's own Code text is not freely available online. The Mississippi Secretary of State's own website confirms that its searchable Mississippi Code is a link to LexisNexis Publishing, and states plainly that the link is not part of the Secretary of State's office. No free, official, full-text source for Mississippi's name-change statute could be located for this article.

What follows states clearly what is confirmed: the statute's basic jurisdictional grant, Mississippi's age of majority for this purpose, a significant April 2025 Mississippi Supreme Court ruling on chancery-court discretion over minor petitions, and where this article could not independently verify a fact, rather than presenting an assumption as settled law.

Information last verified on 2026-08-11. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

How to Legally Change Your Name in Mississippi

Miss. Code Ann. §93-17-1 gives the chancery court, or the chancellor in vacation, jurisdiction to alter a petitioner's name, upon petition, in the county of the petitioner's residence. Because Mississippi's Code is not freely available in an official, full-text form online, this article cites the section number and describes its confirmed substance rather than quoting exact statutory wording. Anyone who needs the precise current text should consult the chancery clerk's office or an attorney, or access the Code through a law library or the LexisNexis-hosted version the Secretary of State links to.

Filing Fees

There is no single official statewide fee schedule for a Mississippi name change. Non-government aggregator sources report a range of roughly $93 to $153, which likely reflects county-by-county variation in chancery clerk fees rather than a fixed state figure. Confirm the current amount with your county chancery clerk before filing.

Age Requirements

Mississippi's age of majority for name-change purposes is effectively 21, not the 18 used in most states covered in this guide. That matters concretely for an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old Mississippi resident who has reached legal adulthood for other purposes but has not yet reached the threshold this state applies to a name-change petition.

Changing a Minor's Name in Mississippi

No dedicated statute for a minor's name change was located for this article. Non-government sources describe the practice as: both parents or legal guardians petition on the child's behalf, unless one has sole legal custody, filed in the chancery court where the child or the parents or guardians reside, with a six-month Mississippi residency option available for a child who moved from out of state. The court applies a best-interest standard, at the chancellor's broad discretion, as the April 2025 ruling described below confirms.

The April 2025 Mississippi Supreme Court Ruling

In In the Matter of the Petition of S.M.-B., a Minor for Change of Name, decided April 17, 2025, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed, by an 8-1 vote, a Hinds County Chancery Court's denial of a 16-year-old's petition to change his legal name, despite both parents having consented to the request. The chancery court had cited the minor's lack of maturity, and the Supreme Court's majority connected the decision to Mississippi's stated public policy against gender-transition assistance for minors, tied to the state's 2023 law restricting gender-affirming medical care for minors. One justice dissented alone, arguing the record was insufficient to decide the case and that it should have been sent back to the lower court.

This ruling is described here neutrally, as a matter of reported appellate practice, not as an endorsement of its reasoning. Its practical significance for a reader is direct: it establishes that a Mississippi chancery court retains broad, and largely unreviewable, discretion to deny even a parent-consented minor's name-change petition. This session could not independently locate the opinion on the Mississippi judiciary's own website to confirm an official case citation; the case name, decision date, and vote count above are corroborated by multiple independent journalism sources.

Divorce, Publication, and Other Restrictions

No dedicated Mississippi statute for divorce-related name restoration, a publication or public-notice requirement, or a criminal-history or sex-offender-registry restriction could be located for this article. Non-government sources describe divorce name restoration as available in practice as part of the chancery court's general divorce-decree discretion, rather than a separate codified right the way it works in some other states. Treat this as an area where practice, not a confirmed statute, appears to govern, and confirm with the chancery clerk or an attorney handling your case.

Changing Your Name After Marriage

No Mississippi marriage-based name-change statute was located for this article. As in most states, a marriage certificate is presumably used administratively with agencies such as the Social Security Administration to update records after marriage.

Related Mississippi Records

For related Mississippi record searches, see Mississippi marriage and divorce records, Mississippi court records, and Mississippi divorce laws.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about Mississippi name-change law. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Mississippi's official Code text is not freely available online, and several procedural details described here reflect non-government secondary sources rather than a directly verified statute. Verify current details with your county chancery clerk or a licensed Mississippi attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

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Last updated: 2026-08-11. Fees and forms reflect their published status as of August 2026.