Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-division-published/1974/128-n-j-super-312-0.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 15:50:22+00:00

Document:
IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF BONNIE LEE DANIELS LAWRENCE, ALSO KNOWN AS BONNIE LEE DANIELS, FOR LEAVE TO ASSUME THE NAME OF BONNIE LEE DANIELS.
Superior Court of New Jersey, Bergen County Court.
*313 Ms. Bonnie Lee Daniels, pro se.
BRESLIN, R.W., J.S.C., Temporarily Assigned.
Plaintiff is a law student who is married to one Adam Lawrence. Plaintiff and her husband are still legally married. The complaint recites that plaintiff has never been convicted of a crime, no suits are now pending against her, and no judgments have been recovered against her in insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings. The reasons plaintiff gives for wishing to change her name are the desire to retain an identity separate and distinct from that of her husband and the professional and social implications attendant upon such a change. Plaintiff has submitted proof of publication of her intent to change her name and has in all other respects complied with the procedures set forth in R. 4:72-1 et seq.
Any person may institute an action in the county court of the county of which he is a resident or in the superior court, for authority to assume another name.
The issue presented to the court is whether a woman who is still legally married may be granted a change of name in a judicial proceeding in order to resume the use of her maiden name as her sole legal name. A thorough review of the case and statutory law of this State discloses no authority on this point, and as a result the court must look to other jurisdictions for guidance in this matter.
The general rule applicable to a change of name is that a person may, in the absence of a fraudulent or improper *315 motive, adopt any name by which he chooses to be known. In re M, supra; Sobel v. Sobel, 46 N.J. Super. 284 (Ch. Div. 1957); State v. Librizzi, 14 N.J. Misc. 904, 188 A. 511 (Sup. Ct. 1936); Bruguier v. Bruguier, 12 N.J. Super. 350 (Ch. Div. 1951). This common law procedure may be utilized without resort to any formal legal proceeding. Such statutory proceedings are generally regarded as providing an additional method for changing one's name rather than abrogating the common law rule in this regard. See 65 C.J.S. Names § 11(2) at 32; 57 Am. Jur.2d, Name § 11 at 282.
See also 57 Am. Jur., 2d, Name, §§ 11, 12; In re Ross, 8 Cal. 2d 608, 67 P.2d 94, 110 A.L.R. 217 (Sup. Ct. 1937); In re Taminosian, 97 Neb. 514, 150 N.W. 824 (Sup. Ct. 1915).
Effect of judgment for change of name in general.
Such person, from and after the day specified therefor in the judgment in the action, shall be known by the name which, by the judgment, he is authorized to assume, and by no other.
It is thus apparent that if this court were to grant plaintiff's petition she would henceforth be known as Bonnie Lee Daniels. She would be forever barred from using any other name, including her husband's surname, for any purpose whatsoever without first instituting a judicial proceeding for a second change of name.
Plaintiff contends that in fact her surname has not been changed by marriage and that her maiden name is still her legal name. If this were indeed true there would be no need for plaintiff to have instituted the present proceeding, since she would be asking the court for a judgment changing her legal name from her purported name to that which is already her legal name.
There is some confusion as to what is the common law rule as to the change of a woman's surname upon marriage. After careful examination of the cases and treatises cited by plaintiff and a thorough review of the law on the subject the court has determined that plaintiff's proposition is not supported in law and is in fact based upon an erroneous interpretation of the common law.
This statement was not supported by any authority whatsoever. Even if precedent of some type had been relied upon, the court was stating the common law as applied in the State of Louisiana, which was derived from French law as opposed to the English origins of the common law of this and all the other states.
A concurring opinion disagreed with the above proposition. In support of this the concurring judge relied upon Kneipp, supra, and a French treatise on civil law.
The Chapman rule is also cited with approval in Baumann v. Baumann, 250 N.Y. 382, 165 N.E. 819 (Ct. App. 1929), wherein the court refused to enjoin the second wife of Charles Baumann from using the name "Mrs. Charles Baumann," even though her husband's divorce from his first wife was invalid. The court reasoned that the first wife's status as the one and only spouse of Mr. Baumann was secure, and though *319 plaintiff had a legal right to use the name "Baumann," that right was not exclusive.
The court then proceeded to uphold plaintiff's right to appear on the ballot using her maiden name.
The court in Rice relied on citations to the American and English Encyclopedia of Law and the cases of Converse v. Converse, 9 Rich. Eq. 535 (S. Carolina 1856); Fendall v. Goldsmid, 2 Prob. Div. 263 (1877), and In re Snook, 2 Hilt. 566 (N.Y.C.P. 1859).
Ths husband being the head of the family, the wife and children generally adopt his name-by custom, the wife is called by the husband's name. But whether marriage shall work any change of name at all is, after all, a mere question of choice, and either may take the other's name, or they may join their names together.
The above language clearly stands only for the proposition that a woman may file an application in a divorce action to shed the surname of her husband with his consent. The language used by the court goes no further than this, although the italicized sentence indicates a recognition by the court that the name of a married woman is inexorably lined to that of her husband.
Fendall v. Goldsmid, supra, involved the marriage, without proper publication of marriage banns, of two persons who had previously divorced each other. Petitioner Alice Goldsmid had had the banns published under that name, although ever since the dissolution of the prior marriage she had been known as Alice Fendall, her maiden name. In dismissing the petition the court stated that marriage confers a name upon a woman which becomes her actual name, and that she can only obtain another name by reputation.
The case of Cowley v. Cowley,  A.C. 450 (H.L. 1901), involved the Earl of Cowley who complained that his commoner ex-wife was continuing to use the title "Countess of Cowley" although she was now married to a commoner. The court held that the Earl had suffered neither legal wrong nor damage. It was conceded that nothing in the divorce decree deprived the countess of either the title or the privileges which she had acquired as the wife of the earl. It also noted that commoners who become peeresses by marriage retain their titles after remarriage to commoners by courtesy and the usages of society, not as a matter of right. Cowley dealt with a woman's right to continue the use of her married name, not her right to discard it. The case, along with Fendall v. Goldsmid, supra, is cited in 19 Halsbury's Laws of England, Husband and Wife, § 1350 at 829, as supporting the proposition that a woman's change of name by marriage is a change in fact only and not a change in law.
A careful reading of the above cases and articles leads this court to the inescapable conclusion that the reliance placed upon them by the court in Rice v. State, as quoted supra, for the proposition that a woman adopts her husband's name upon marriage only as a matter of custom and not as a matter of law, is misplaced, and that therefore the statement of the law in Rice is erroneous.
A much-cited work on the question before this court is The Law of Married Women by Moss Turner-Samuels *325 (1957). The author states (at 345) that the practice of a woman taking her husband's surname upon marriage is a custom only and not compellable by law. The author cites no authority for this statement. He then remarks that a wife may continue to use her maiden, married, or any other name by which she wishes to be known. The context in which this statement is made leads the court to the conclusion that the author was referring to a person's change of name by the common-law rather than the statutory method. The cases relied upon by the author in support of his contention are Cowley v. Cowley, supra; Davies v. Lowndes, 1 Bing. N.C. 597 (1835), and DuBoulay v. DuBoulay (1869) L.R. 2 P.C. 430. In Davies the decedent appointed William Lowndes his lawful heir, provided that no heir at law of decedent was found, and further provided that Lowndes change his surname to Selby, the surname of decedent. The main point of the case as far as change of name is concerned is that a person need not go through a formal proceeding to change his name, but may do so by what has been referred to as the common-law method, supra.
The DuBoulay case involved a woman who was holding herself and her child out to the community as the wife and child of plaintiff. The court refused to enjoin her from continuing to do so. The case stands for the proposition that a court will, under certain circumstances, refrain from stepping in to prohibit a woman from using the surname of another, even though she is not related to him by blood or marriage. Neither of the above cases deals with the subject of the proper legal name of a married woman.
Turner-Samuels also mentions the case of Lady Hatton, the second wife of Sir Edward Coke, who refused to take her second husband's name and in fact never did so. This situation was never before a court of law and cannot be cited as precedent. Even if it were to be relied upon it would fall into that class of cases wherein the wife never takes her husband's surname but uses her prior name consistently and nonfraudulently.
*326 Thus it is apparent that the statements made by Turner-Samuels as to the true name of a married woman are also without foundation.
The remaining authorities cited by plaintiff are Priscilla Ruth MacDougall, "Married Women's Common Law Right to Their Own Surnames," Women's Rights L. Rptr. (Fall-Winter 1972-73), and Kathleen A. Carlsson, "Surnames of Married Women and Legitimate Children," 17 N.Y.L.F. 552 (1971). Both of these articles conclude that a woman has a common law right to retain the use of her maiden surname. However, in support of this conclusion both authors rely primarily on the cases discussed, supra. Since the court has concluded that those cases do not in fact support the above proposition, plaintiff cannot rely on these articles as authority.
In all of the cases discussed in this opinion in which the wife was allowed to retain her maiden name, she had used the name exclusively, consistently and nonfraudulently in all her affairs, both before and after marriage. Plaintiff in the present case has offered no evidence to show that she has similarly conducted her affairs. In fact, plaintiff filed the petition itself, using her husband's surname and giving her full maiden name as an alternative appellation. The law which plaintiff has relied upon as authority for her contention that she still legally retains her maiden name has been shown upon close examination and analysis not to be supportive of the proposition. While there is still no clear statement of what is a married woman's legal name, it cannot be denied that the tradition of a woman adopting her husband's surname upon marriage is deeply imbedded in the common law of both Great Britain and the United States, and is almost universally followed to this day.
The public interest in the marriage relationship is greater even than the private interest of husband and wife in their relationship. The law favors the marital relation and the permanence of the family. The family, with the obligations and privileges pertaining to it, reaches back of all state regulations, although it is necessarily regulated by positive law.
Plaintiff and her husband are both of youthful age. Although they have no children at this time, it is not at all improbable that they will eventually raise a family. The situation which would be created by the granting of plaintiff's application, viz., plaintiff and her husband each continuing to use the surnames with which they were born, would cause great confusion in the community in which they *328 live and could well have a traumatic effect upon any children they might have. This is especially true in light of plaintiff's use of her husband's surname subsequent to her marriage. The problem would also arise of what surname to give the children of their marriage and the confusion and bureaucratic nightmares the process of selecting a surname would create.
As a result of the foregoing discussion, this court is of the opinion that there is sufficient cause in this matter for it in its sound discretion to deny plaintiff's petition, and the same is hereby denied.

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