The Senate with a right-wing majority examines this Tuesday at first reading a bill LREM aimed at facilitating the change of name, supported by the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti, but which was largely unraveled by the senators in committee.
Presented as a text of “freedom”, the bill of the deputy LREM Patrick Vignal “relating to the choice of the name resulting from the filiation” aims to come into force in July. But the senators have objections.
Text carried by “emotion”
For the rapporteur Marie Mercier (LR), this text is carried by “emotion”, but “is not reasonable”. “The more I worked, the more I auditioned, the more I realized that we were going into something whose consequences we did not measure,” she confided.
The senators thus opposed in committee the flagship measure of the bill, concerning the change of surname, the one which appears obligatorily on all acts of civil status.
The text adopted by the deputies opens up the possibility for any adult to ask, once in their life, to take, or add, the name of their other parent, by a simple procedure at the town hall. Instead, the rapporteur proposes to improve the current cumbersome and time-consuming procedure, which goes through the Ministry of Justice, by exempting a request to add a parent’s name or substitute justification from a ” legitimate interest”.
The difficulty of justifying a so-called “emotional” reason, for those wishing to give up the name of a violent, incestuous, absent parent or any other personal reason, would thus be circumvented.
The Assembly will have the last word on February 24
The other point of opposition from the senators this time concerns the “customary” name, the most common common name being that of a married woman who can use her husband’s name as a common name. The senators approved the possibility for adults to substitute, as a matter of practice, the name of one parent for that of the other, in addition to the addition which is already possible. On the other hand, they objected to name substitution for minors. They also objected to the possibility for a parent to decide alone to add his surname to the name of the child as a matter of use. The purpose of this provision is to make life easier for parents whose children bear only the name of the other parent, especially for mothers after a divorce.
For the rapporteur, the question of the name should be systematically addressed at the time of separation.
If the senators stick to their positions in session, and fail to find a compromise with the deputies in the joint committee, the National Assembly will have the last word on February 24.