I am a male to female transsexual seeking a name change in Wooster, Ohio. Must my petition be posted in the Wooster Daily Record?

  Regarding an application for a name change, the Ohio Revised Code Section 2717.01 states in part, "Notice of the application shall be given once by publication in a newspaper of general circulation in the county at least thirty days before the hearing on the application. The notice shall set forth the court in which the application was filed, the case number, and the date and time of the hearing." Each court determines the newspaper(s) where this publication must occur. I do not know exactly why the Wayne County Probate Court requires that you use the Wooster Daily Record, but perhaps one reason is cost. Notice can be expensive in a large paper like the Akron Beacon Journal. It will cost you much less to publish your notice in the Wooster Daily Record, because fewer people read it. By choosing the smaller paper, the court is helping to keep your court costs lower. In Columbus, where I mainly practice, the vast majority of notices are published in a small paper called The Daily Reporter. If my clients were required to use The Columbus Dispatch (Franklin County's largest paper), some would not be able to afford it.