Court Opinion

ID: 9542394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:33:45.949002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:50.246533
License: Public Domain

SAYLOR, Judge,
dissenting:
A trial court has wide discretion in deciding whether to grant or refuse a petition for change of name. Petition of Falcucci, 355 Pa. 588, 50 A.2d 200 (1947). Because I do not discern any abuse of such discretion by the en banc trial court in the present matter, I respectfully dissent.
Although it is true that a person may at any time informally adopt and use any name, provided that such name is used consistently, nonfraudulently and exclusively, see 54 Pa. C.S.A § 701(b), if a person wishes to formally change his or her name, court approval must be obtained pursuant to 54 Pa.C.S.A § 701(a). Because such petitions for a formal change of name implicate the judicial process in sanctioning the petitioner’s choice of name, I believe that the trial court properly considered not only the literal requirements of the name change statute but also public policy interests.
*230Here, petitioner is a pre-operative transsexual. Although petitioner receives routine hormone therapy, has undergone permanent facial reconstructive surgery, and has had breast implants, the fact remains that he has not yet had gender reassignment surgery, which involves the removal of the male genitalia and the construction of female genitalia. Therefore, although he possesses some of the outward physical characteristics of a female, his physical transformation to the opposite gender is not yet complete. To permit him to adopt an obviously female name would be to perpetuate a fiction, since the fact remains that petitioner is anatomically a male until he undergoes reassignment surgery. Only after such procedure would petitioner be a female, physically as well as psychologically. See, Matter of Anonymous, 57 Misc.2d 813, 293 N.Y.S.2d 834 (1968) (court granted name change from male name to female name where petitioner was a male-to-female transsexual who had already undergone sex reassignment surgery and was both anatomically and psychologically female “in fact”). To judicially sanction a pre-operative male transsexual’s adoption of an obviously female name would grant legal recognition to a physiological fiction.
Accordingly, I would affirm the. trial court’s denial of the petition for legal change of name.