Court Opinion

ID: 9739735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:20:14.511161+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:13.679085
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur in the court’s conclusion that chapter 674 does not provide a vehicle for resolving the present dispute. Unlike the majority, I reach this conclusion not by looking at the statutory grounds in section 674.6, but by realizing that this is simply not a name change case. It is a challenge to the legitimacy of the name placed on the child’s birth certificate in the first instance. This type of challenge parallels the issue involved in In re Marriage of Gulsvig, 498 N.W.2d 725 (Iowa 1993). We recognized in that case that “the mother does not have the absolute right to name the child because of custody due to birth_ Consequently, [the mother] should gain no advantage from her unilateral act in naming [the child].” Id. at 729.
The question that the present case really presents is how a legal challenge to such unilateral action is to be mounted. The Gulsvig decision authorized this type of challenge to be raised in a pending dissolution-of-marriage action, but conceded that ' there is no express grant of authority to do that in chapter 598. On further reflection, I submit that the correct view should be that the authority of a court to referee disputes over the initial naming of a child, in which the parents cannot agree, is found among the court’s general equity powers. While those powers may be properly exercised in a pending dissolution action to resolve a then current dispute over a child’s original name, there is no reason why they may not also be exercised in an independent action brought for the single purpose of resolving an original naming dispute. In my view, Kirk is entitled to bring an original action in the district court for a determination of the initial name of the child. It is not necessary nor legally appropriate for this court to suggest that this issue be settled by filing a modification petition in the now final dissolution action. There is no provision concerning the child’s name in the original decree to modify. Nor does the matter of a change of circumstances since the original decree (the sine qua non for success in a modification action) have anything to do with the issues of naming the child. This is an original issue that has not before been ruled on.
Although language in the Gulsvig opinion suggests otherwise, I believe that it is *883inaccurate to view that case as authority on the issue of changing the names of children whose names were properly determined in the first instance. The issue in that case, as in the present case, did not involve a change of name. It was a dispute over the determination of the original name by the unilateral action of one parent.
The specter of flooding the district courts with applications seeking to change the names of minor children in dissolution-of-marriage actions if the current name was determined by agreement of both parents is disturbing. Children’s names should be quickly agreed upon, memorialized on the birth certificate, and thereafter not disturbed except as might be provided in a proceeding under chapter 674. Unfortunately, the broad language in the Gul-svig decision sends a different message.
I would use the present case, which comes so soon on the heels of Gulsvig, to disavow what I believe to have been a false signal. As we have frequently recognized, the binding force of a prior appellate opinion is coextensive with the facts upon which it is founded. State v. Iowa Dist. Court, 492 N.W.2d 666, 667 (Iowa 1992); State v. Foster, 356 N.W.2d 548, 550 (Iowa 1984); Perfection Tire & Rubber Co. v. Kellogg Mackay Equip. Co., 194 Iowa 523, 530, 187 N.W. 32, 35 (1927).
McGIVERIN, C.J., and HARRIS and LAVORATO, JJ., join this special concurrence.