Legal Transition: An Overview

This page includes the following

• • What is legal transition?

What is legal transition?

When people change their preferred name or pronouns, social acceptance of these preferences can be generated as simply as through verbal request. Having these preferences accepted by systems of bureaucracy can be much more difficult. Legal transition is the collection of processes required for preferences in name, gender marker, or other modes of reference to be updated in all kinds of bureaucratic systems, from the federal government to Yale SIS.

This guide will be looking at the processes required to change preferred name and gender marker associated with the Yale personnel record system (which includes IDs, emails, Canvas profiles, and more) and various US government documentation and records agencies such as Social Security, DMV, birth certificates, and immigration/residency documents.