Phillipines Passport Married Guidance & Counseling Certificate of Attendance

[OnMyWay]

On 12/14/2017 at 8:29 PM, earthdome said:

On an earlier post I said you did CFO after you got her passport with her maiden name. I may be mistaken on that.

Yes, you need the GCP Certificate from CFO before DFA will change the name in the passport to the married name.  My wife called DFA about this.

Good news from CFO.  There are now 3 offices that do seminars.  They now have an office in Clark where they will do the seminars.  However, they are not part of the online registration yet.  Only Manila and Cebu have that.  Call the Clark office for more info.

My wife plans to do this at Clark and we will let you know how it goes.

http://www.cfo.gov.ph/news/cfo-news-and-events/3445-cfo-opens-extension-desk-in-clark-pampanga.html

[OnMyWay]

On 3/25/2018 at 10:46 AM, OnMyWay said:

Yes, you need the GCP Certificate from CFO before DFA will change the name in the passport to the married name.  My wife called DFA about this.

Good news from CFO.  There are now 3 offices that do seminars.  They now have an office in Clark where they will do the seminars.  However, they are not part of the online registration yet.  Only Manila and Cebu have that.  Call the Clark office for more info.

My wife plans to do this at Clark and we will let you know how it goes.

http://www.cfo.gov.ph/news/cfo-news-and-events/3445-cfo-opens-extension-desk-in-clark-pampanga.html

Old thread but I will provide an update, using my usual long winded style!  

1.  They now do CFO seminars in Davao, so there are 4 offices that do them;  Manila, Cebu, Clark and Davao.

2.  My wife attended the CFO seminar in Clark yesterday.  We booked it a long time ago and the schedule was full until May.  Her scheduled time was listed as 2-5 pm.  We arrived early and dropped her off.  I hung out in the area until she texted to make sure everything is OK.

The Clark CFO office is a nice area of Clark, at the beginning of some hills.  Across the street, they are building a huge condo resort.  I think there are already 5 towers and they must be 40+ stories each.  Supposed to be a golf course, etc.  The CFO office (and some attached government offices like NBI and labor training facilities) appear to be in an old U.S. military high school or similar.  There are renovations going on, and the permit said they were building a new auditorium, perhaps for seminars?

The kids and I drove around and just up the street is Aqua Planet!  

https://www.aquaplanet.ph/

That place is huge and there were not many customers.  We might go there sometime if I find out they have some small kids stuff.  You can go there while your wife is in the seminar!

Back to my wife, her purpose to get the certificate was only to change her name on her passport, not to move to the U.S.  So, they start with a one on one interview, and then a class presentation.  The interviewer was from the Manila office and said she comes out once a week.  After finding out that we live here in Subic, have been married for a while, have 3 kids and would not be moving, she said my wife would not have to attend the class session.  She was done by around 2:45 and most of that time was spent waiting for her number to be called for the one on one.

Easy peasy at Clark CFO!

[hk blues]

We are in Iloilo and we went to the local DFO office to renew my wife's passport, which also required a name change following our marriage.  Only then did we know about the seminar.  My wife kicked up a fuss about this and somehow they agreed to renew the passport and change the name without the seminar attendance slip. I  assume (I know, I know) that when she comes to renew again there won't be a problem as no name change is involved - the DFO won't be looking for any seminar certificate/stamp in such a case (I hope!)

[OnMyWay]

3 hours ago, hk blues said:

We are in Iloilo and we went to the local DFO office to renew my wife's passport, which also required a name change following our marriage.  Only then did we know about the seminar.  My wife kicked up a fuss about this and somehow they agreed to renew the passport and change the name without the seminar attendance slip. I  assume (I know, I know) that when she comes to renew again there won't be a problem as no name change is involved - the DFO won't be looking for any seminar certificate/stamp in such a case (I hope!)

Wow!  She got lucky!

[graham59]

As far as I'm aware, it is not compulsory for a Filipino woman to 'change her name after marriage anyway, is it ?

My first wife certainly didn't, until well after she was already in the UK. 

As for this CFO business... just a good brainwashing session to make sure the Mrs (or OFW) sends plenty of cash back to the Phils.

Utter bollocks, but no way around it.