Change of name

Change of name

"I recently heard that children of divorced parents can now apply to change their surname if they wish to use the same name as their mother when living with her. Is this true? How do you go about it?"

Charlotte, Geneva

In the chapter dealing with the protection of personality, article 30 of the Civil Code (CC) states that the government of the canton of domicile may, if there are legitimate grounds, authorise a person to change his or her name.

This possibility has existed for a long time, but the law was amended slightly in 2013: until then, a request for a change of name had to be based on "just grounds", whereas now it only has to be based on "legitimate grounds".

This minor revision of the legislative text gave the Federal Supreme Court the opportunity to re-examine its rather restrictive case law on the issue in a recent ruling in a Thurgau case that caused a stir in the judicial world last October, since it was communicated to the media by the Chancellery of our country's highest court.

Our Supreme Court has decided that it is no longer necessary to justify a request for a change of surname by providing evidence of what used to be called concrete social disadvantages; the child's simple wish for his or her surname to coincide with that of his or her custodial parents is now considered sufficient grounds for granting a request for a change of surname.

The federal judges specified that the right to a change of name may be exercised autonomously by any person capable of discernment; a child of twelve is recognised as being capable of expressing such a wish and asserting this claim in court on his or her own initiative. For younger children, the request for a change of name may be made by the legal representative, although in this case the risk of conflicts of interest between the parents should not be underestimated, and a full examination of the circumstances of the particular case should be carried out.