Hi,

We seem to be having this issue more and more and I want to clarify the proper way of handling these. We have individual, female, persons using their maiden name as part of their last name.

For example the person's name is Mary Brennan Smith. The DL is #S999-0999-9999. We load her name on our database as Brennan. The DL does list her as Mary Brennan Smith. Aren't we using the wrong last name when loading these people on to our database?

Yes. Maiden name is generally considered the same as a middle name, unless hyphenated. The legal last name would be Smith and that's how I think it should be loaded to the system. (Now if it were Brennan-Smith, then I think it should be on the system under B.)

The name was not hyphenated. I have always looked at the alpha character in the DL as an aide in IDing the last name. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't being too picky.

Thanks for your response.

Our core system (Jack Henry) will always choose the first letter of the last name as its filing mechanism. When a name is hyphenated, (Smith-Jones) it will choose S, rather than J. I train platform people to be alert to 1) how does the customer introduce herself, and 2) does the DL correspond to the last name? (Here in NJ driver's licenses also begin with first letter of surname.

Although it's a difficult thing to bring into conversation, I encourage you to be sure that customer intends to remain "hyphnated". Two years from now, when she is tired of correcting everyone who calls her Jones, instead of Smith-Jones, our computer system will still be listing her as Smith-Jones, and then it gets difficult to locate the customer's CIF quickly.

The key is making sure we ask the right questions to determine the customer's legal name and if they filed that name with SSA; otherwise, we'll always have issues. We had a mismatch the other day on a woman that had been married for 15 years, but never updated her SSA records.

JHA users want to make sure they are watching their IRS codes to avoid name/SSN mismatches. When you enter an entity such as "Estate of John Smith", you will need to change the IRS code on the CIF level to SMIT to avoid a mismatch. It is also a good idea to establish an alternate name lookup to find Smith, John or you end up with a thousand "Estate of" short names.