SD Drivers License Renewal

louiskathy wrote:
Is this the first time that you are renewing since the new regulations went into effect Jan 1, 2010?? Do you have a passport?? If you have a passport, you'll have a much easier time proving your identity.

We made the mistake of not taking the new regulations seriously. Cost us a lot of hassle and expense (appx $500) we could have avoided.

1. Women must prove their last name from birth certificate to now. (I was divorced and remarried...and never thought to bring my divorce papers along to the DMV.)

2. Hubby had lost his social security card 40 years ago. Never needed it until he tried to renew his SD driver's license in 2010.

If we had had passports in our hands before we stepped foot inside the DMV... we could have sailed in and sailed out with them in hand the first day we tried... instead of waiting 3 weeks for all the documents we needed to be mailed to us from different places in different states so we could be successful the 2nd time we tried to renew.

This is the long tale (copied from our blog):
We left our MH in Oregon and drove back to SD in the jeep. One of the main reasons for this trip back to SD was to renew our South Dakota driver’s licenses there. We didn’t realize that we’d need more documents to qualify for the SD license now than we would need to get passports. At least for me, that was true. To get a passport I just needed a current driver’s license, non-laminated social security card, a state certified original birth certificate, passport photo and about $100. BUT to get a SD DL, I needed my social security card and either a passport or a state certified birth certificate (showing my maiden name) and a state certified marriage certificate FOR EACH time I was married in order to prove my name from birth to present.

Lou has always had a City of Chicago original, certified, birth certificate but he has never bothered to get a State of Illinois original, certified, birth certificate. SD didn’t consider the City of Chicago original valid. They required a State of Illinois one. He didn’t have his social security card either (lost it as a teenager) and SD would not consider his Medicare card, voting card, 1099 or 1040 (all of which we had along) as documentation. That meant that we had a major problem.

Lou’s DL expired in March and he was driving on a one-time-only extension issued by the SD DMV that was going to expire May 15th. He couldn’t get a social security card at the Federal building in Huron, SD, without a CURRENT driver’s license. He couldn’t get a driver’s license without a social security card and he couldn’t get a birth certificate out of Illinois without a driver’s license. (I think I have that straight.)
He couldn’t get a birth certificate out of Illinois in less than two weeks anyway and today was May 4th, 2010. His license would expire on May 15th (which mean our vehicle insurance, in his name, would expire)and South Dakota DMV wouldn’t give him another extension.

So we left the building without either of us getting a renewed SD DL. We had quite a bit to think about and I have to admit that we didn’t get much “rest”. We were back at it the next morning and our sole hope was to get Lou’s City of Chicago birth certificate acknowledged and accepted by the SD DMV. It took prayer before we presented our case. (We didn’t have one yesterday. We were too stunned.) This time the gal behind the counter faxed a copy of Lou’s City of Chicago birth certificate to her supervisor in Sioux Falls and he agreed to allow us to use it for the driver’s license. Prayer worked.

Now, all we needed was his social security number to be proved to them, without a social security card. We needed a 1099 with his full name, full social security number and the title “1099” all on one page. The 1099 we had along had ONLY the last four digits of his social security number showing (xxx-xx-1234). Believe it or not, we had to have a trusted friend back in Oregon get into our RV, find our tax folder and fax a document that had Lou’s full ssn showing on it, to us at the DMV. All for a driver’s license. Keep in mind that we had our 1040’s with us. 1040’s don’t count.

As for me and my certified marriage certificates… that was just a matter of sending for them and waiting for them to get mailed to me. Oh, and paying for them (with postage it ran appx $50 per document). South Dakota is not the only state doing this so you might want to gather your paperwork together now.
If you are like us, and need two documents at $50 each, you might as well just get a passport for $100.
Actually, we opted to send for all of it because we just didn’t know which would make it to us first.

We spent 3 weeks with relatives in ND before all the documents (including our passports) were mailed to us at our SD mail forwarding service, then forwarded to us so we could drive back to SD with them in hand to get our Driver's licenses renewed.

Federal law requires all states to verify the identity of all persons this way. Your troubles ,regretably for you , are not an SD issue. In any state you would have had to prove yourself the same way.
Can we get back on topic about the pending online renewal?