Court Opinion

ID: 9688861
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:09:36.930722+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:42.690938
License: Public Domain

SANDERS, Justice
(concurring).
In my opinion, the result reached in the instant case is correct.
Although unnecessary for the decision, the majority cites, with apparent approval, the' rule that by marriage a woman loses her maiden surname and takes her husband’s surname as hef legal name. I am unable to agree that marriage has this-effect under the law of Louisiana.
The common law fiction of merger between husband and wife, from which a change of the wife’s legal name arises, has never obtained in Louisiana. Rather, this state has followed the civil law doctrine. After marriage, the legal name of a woman continues tó' be her maiden name, or patronym. The surname of the husband is used only as a matter of custom to indicate the marital status of the wife. See Succession of Kneipp, 172 La. 411, 134 So. 376; 1 McMahon Louisiana Practice p. 147; 1 Planiol, Traite Eléméntaire De Droit Civil (An English Translation by the Louisiana State Law Institute) No. 390.
Accordingly, I concur in the decree.