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.
“The name is quite a story“: the Senate with a right-wing majority largely unraveled on Tuesday February 15 at first reading an LREM bill aimed at facilitating the change of name, supported by the Keeper of the Seals Éric Dupond-Moretti, but also by the left of the hemicycle .
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If the senators and deputies fail to find a compromise position in the joint committee, the National Assembly will have the last word on February 24. Presented by the Minister as a text “who repairs», awaited by «many of our fellow citizens to soothe the pain of bearing a name“, which recalls an unfortunate intimate story, the bill of the deputy LREM Patrick Vignal”relating to the choice of the name resulting from the filiationaims to come into force in July. But she ran into objections from the senatorial right.
Opposition
“Hello, what is your name? And you, what’s your name?“. The rapporteur LR Marie Mercier staged her intervention to better mark the importance of the name in the identity and social recognition of a person. Despite the arguments deployed by the Minister, the Senate opposed the flagship measure of the bill, concerning the change of surname, which is mandatory on all civil status documents.
The text adopted by the deputies opens the possibility for any adult to ask, once in his life, to take, or add, the name of his other parent, by a simple procedure in town hall, and no longer by decree taken at the the result of a long and tedious procedure going through the Ministry of Justice. Defendant “the virtues of formalism“, the rapporteur proposed instead a specific, simplified procedure, but still going through the Ministry of Justice.
“Back to square one»
The other point of opposition of the senators concerns this time the name “of use”, the most common surname being that of a married woman who can use her husband’s surname as a surname. 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. Similarly, they objected to the possibility for a parent to decide alone whether to use his family name in addition to the name of the child.
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The objective of this provision, which responds to a request from the collective “portemonnomis to facilitate the daily life of parents whose children bear only the name of the other parent, in particular for mothers after a divorce or separation. Despite a 2005 law allowing parents to choose the name they pass on to their child (father, mother or both together), 8 out of 10 children born in 2020 have indeed taken their father’s name. For the rapporteur, who invoked “interest of the child», the question of the name should be systematically addressed at the time of the separation.
The Keeper of the Seals regretted a “Back to square one” Who “can no longer address the concerns of separated mothers“. The environmentalist senator Mélanie Vogel unsuccessfully carried out several amendments tending to go even further beyond the initial text, proposing in particular to systematize the double name in the declaration of birth. “All my life my mother told me + my name was like no one +“, she testified.