Do surnames matter if you split?

[Oreocake24]

Hi all

i stupidly agreed to give DD her fathers surname and we are now no longer together.
I wanted double barrel but was talked out of it and in the haze of the newborn stage I think exhaustion took over and I was just in agreement to do what was the easiest option rather than arguing over ‘just surnames’.

now we are no longer together I am really panicking about what this means. Stupid me I know, should have thought about this first.

can her father take her away without my say so? I of course keep her passport but technically could he do that?
could he stop me from doing things with my own daughter?
Does he have more rights than me now?

No. He is the same parental rights if his name is on the birth certificate.

Are you both on the birth certificate?

Having his surname doesn't automatically give him any sort of rights.

Their surname makes no difference at all. It doesn't convey any legal rights.

How old is your daughter? Is he on the birth certificate?

It's very easy to re register a birth and change the child's surname - if he's on the first one he'd have to agree to this.

If he doesn't agree you can go to court and ask for double barrel and they will most likely say yes, unless your child is older and it would be disruptive to her. If she's too young to know her surname they'll definitely give it to you.

Neither of you should take your child out of the country without consent from the other (if he is on the birth certificate and therefore also has parental responsibility) if you do them it's child abduction. If you take the birth cert with you on holiday it will prove your baby is yours.

Ps in my opinion babies should always have mums name

Thank you ladies.

@Unexpectedlysinglemum that’s really helpful thank you. I have put it to him re changing to double barrel and he has said no. I can explain about court proceedings as you mention hopefully that might sway him.
totally agree - don’t know why on earth I done it. Super disappointed in myself and biggest regret to date.

Google could help you rather than here because you could be anywhere in the world and laws are different . A name doesn't carry a right! In most places anyways, google is helpful

I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I do agree though that people should only have children with partners they are confident are right for them and then this issue goes away.

I don’t know a single child from an unmarried couple who doesn’t have the father’s surname. The parents were all 35+ though and most had been in relationships for 10 years or more so completely stable although not bothered about marriage. Not one of them has split up so it’s not an issue.

Not using the father’s surname leads to issues later on as people invariably assume if the father and child have different surnames that he’s probably not the father. Nobody ever assumes the mother isn’t the child’s mother.

Practically speaking, you can simply start using a double-barrelled name for nursery and school etc, it doesn't have to be legally changed for those purposes.

@Charlie2121 I appreciate your post is probably not aimed at me, however, I do just want to say that this isn’t always the case.

DDs father and I were together for 8 years before trying for a baby. It took 2 years to conceive. We have also lived together for coming up to 5 years and prior to that lived with my parents whilst saving for our mortgage.
you can have a baby with someone and then they change, and then things don’t work out. In my case both myself and DD’s father have changed and sadly I can’t make him love the new version of myself. I can’t help and nor could I have ever predicted that things wouldn’t work out - given that we have been through some difficult things (personally) and always stood by each other to help the other one through, I didn’t expect a baby - the best thing to happen to me - to be the thing to break us. So it’s really not about ‘having a baby with the right person’

This is a daft post, sorry I know that’s blunt but everything about it is just daft.

Agree. Just bonkers.

Every child of unmarried parents should have mother's name as a minimum.

I am married, and was before having children, but kept my name when I married and my children have my name. No one assumes my husband isn't their father, or if they do they've not mentioned it. I don't care what people assume x it was the right decision for us for a number of reasons.

Well, I’m 51, with a 12 year old, and only a tiny minority of married couples I know with children have given them the father’s surname, while DS’s class list shows that 17 of 27 children have both parents’ surnames. It’s pretty reactionary not to.

I’m genuinely astounded by this. I counted up all the people I know either friends or people I’ve met through mother and baby groups and I could think of 16 where the parents weren’t married. All 16 children have the father’s surname. I don’t know a single unmarried couple where the child has the mothers name. None have double barrelled names either.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of them suggest they were considering not doing this.

Maybe it is an age thing as all are older parents in stable relationships.

Not using the father’s surname leads to issues later on as people invariably assume if the father and child have different surnames that he’s probably not the father. Nobody ever assumes the mother isn’t the child’s mother

this is why my dc have their dads name. We’re married but I didn’t change mine.

dh had kids from his first marriage, so we saw the difficulty he had as a single man with kids having to show he was dad at every step. Even with the same surname. However when I met him and we took the kids anywhere I was always assumed to be mum. Even at a&e I had to point out I didn’t have pr, they didn’t even ask what our relationship was, and deferred to me over dh.

my kids are teens now and do hobbies requiring overnight stays. A 50 year old man booking in to a hotel with a 15 year old- they always ask DD’s name, and appear reassured when the surname is the same. I imagine different names would be massive red flags, especially as they both take after me and are blonde and blue eyed, dh is more Mediterranean complexion.

it just makes things massively easier for him if he takes them anywhere on his own.

@MysteriousKor

That's highly unusual, perhaps location dependent. Everyone I know has used the fathers name for their dc whether married or not and I'm the same age as you. I know one double barrelled but they weren't together at the time of the birth (or ever, it was an arrangement that suited both of them, and still the best of friends I should add)

I’m not sure it’s location-dependent, maybe education-dependent? It’s a city-centre school near hospitals and university, so lots of the parents are medics or academics, from a range of countries. Highly-educated women with professional careers are less likely to change their names on marriage and understandably want to give their child their name, and of course there’s no tradition of name-changing on marriage in many cultures.

It certainly never occurred to me not to give DS my name, and our only discussion about DS’s name was which order our surnames sounded best in.

In my experience it is the exact opposite.

Most of the people I know are in very senior roles such as lawyers, senior execs etc and all have given their DC their father’s surname.

The only people I have come across who don’t are either very young or not in stable relationships where they don’t expect the father to be around long term.

As another poster has said maybe it’s a geographical thing. I’m not sure but it is surprising to see hear about such a range of very differing experiences on here.

I must admit in not a fan of there double barrelled surnames. But what happens in 30 years when 2 such people have kids. Quadruple surname!!! Or the painful task of ditching one each?

This is such a non-issue and discussed so, so many times on here. Just sounds like a way to convince women having their surname included is ‘silly’.

Perhaps the lawyers and ‘senior execs’ you know are reactionary sexist pigs or women suffering from internalised misogyny, who’ve been convinced that giving a child, naturally enough, both its parents’ names signals a lack of commitment or is ‘silly?

Think this through rationally. Parents giving their child both their surnames, and ditching an anachronistic patriarchal tradition which vanishes that child’s maternal line, is a signal of lack of commitment between these parents, rather than a sign of mutual respect? A woman has to not give her name to the child to whom she has given 50% of genetic material and whom she has carried, to suggest to the rest of the world she’s committed to its father, because her name existing in her child’s name is a sign of what — her independent existence? Her input into her child?

it’s actually interesting in a pernicious way to see how the more idiotic responses to giving your child both surnames has evolved on Mn. It used to be ‘“two names looks pretentious’ or the ‘what happens when someone with two surnames has a child with someone with two surnames?’ as some kind of ‘gotcha’, now it’s ’it looks unmarried’. Equally dopey, of course.

Exactly.

It’s the women who hold the senior roles, many of whom I met through work. They all made the decision themselves.

Thanks for the random debate about surnames. I’m not sure how any of it helps the OP though. OP, the best thing you can do is speak to someone - not sure who - but likely to be someone in Births, Deaths, and Marriages at your local council who will be able to give you more information.

My DC have my name. I did not change my name on marriage - I’m married to DCs father but we had children first. We were together a long time before DC/marriage. I’m an older mum.

DH hated it, but I offered both double barrelling and us all changing our surnames together and he rejected both, so I didn’t feel he was willing to compromise. I also said he could double barrel to mine, or we all double barrel together but he said I was being ridiculous. In fact I offered every option I could think of that wasn’t just the DC (and me) taking solely his name.

He did eventually agree to double barrel the DC names to avoid issues if he took them away without me at any time but he never sorted the paperwork and I didn’t bother as it was for him not me we were doing it (as they already had my name). I thought if he was that bothered he could at least sort it out!

The thing that amazed me was how many people told me how awkward I was being. Intelligent, educated peers, ‘feminist’ friends, all my family. I heard all the arguments - how it was traditional to have the man’s name (err, it’s not, not for children born outside wedlock!), how it was so unfair on him (but the equivalent wouldn’t be unfair on me?). How it would be my fault if he rejected the DC (wtf??). Really weird stuff was said to me when I hadn’t asked for any opinions.

But back to you OP (sorry for the tangent). What’s done is done OP and it doesn’t sound like you’ll have any issues as it’s far more common now for children to have different names to their mothers. As others have said, either one of you should give permission for the other to leave the country with your DC.