A family no matter which name they choose
BERN, SWITZERLAND – All is supposed to be fair in love and war, but Swiss law covering keeping your name or changing it when you marry has not treated men and women equally.
This will change 1 January 2013, when married couples and homosexual couples will have more options.
The changes passed by parliament in September 2011 also cover the names of children, so it extends to unmarried couples with children.
Bern’s announcement of the change states: “Marriage in theory no longer has an impact on the name of the members of a couple nor any obligation to change these. Each of them keeps his or her own name and the right to maintain it. An engaged couple may, however, announce that they intend to use the name of either one as the single family name. The same option is available to same-sex couples who have registered their partnership.”
A partner who changed his or her name upon marriage under the current law and who wishes to change it back to the pre-marriage name may, at any time, tell the civil authorities that he or she wants to make the change.
Same-sex couples who registered their partnership before the change in the law have one year to declare the pre-partnership name they want to share.
The changes include:
- Children of married parents take either the single shared family name or, if the parents have different names, the pre-marriage name that the parents choose as a family name when they marry
- If the parents are not married, the child carries the mother’s name
- If the parents have shared custody, they may opt for the child to have the father’s name; they have one year to officially declare this
- In the case of unmarried parents with joint custody the parents have one year to give the child the father’s name, but once a child is 12, the child’s agreement is needed to make any name change.
Couples have four family name options when they marry in Switzerland, but the European Court may change this
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss government has been told by the European Court of Human Rights to pay a Swiss-Hungarian couple €10,000 in damages and reimburse them €4,515 in legal costs for discrimination against dual national couples. The two have been fighting Swiss marriage laws that prevented both of them from keeping their original family names.
The couple, who live in canton Bern, took their case to the European Court after a Swiss high court refused to overturn a ruling by the canton. The European court’s decision in the case, Losonci Rose and Rose v. Switzerland, is not final, but Switzerland has not said if it will appeal.
The man is Hungarian and the woman has Swiss and French nationalities. Both are over age 55. They argued that changing their names in France and Hungary would be too difficult, and she also argued that as a senior administrator in the Swiss federal government she is well known under the name she had before her marriage, so she should not be required to change her name. The two decided that he would take her name but the law stipulates that it must be added after his own. She kept her name, unchanged, when they married in 2003.
Problems arose when he tried to use the name Losonci alone.
The Sears Tower in Chicago, once famed as the tallest building in the world, has a new owner and with it a new name: welcome to the world, the Willis Tower. Marketing experts are debating whether or not the insurance company behind the name will be able to make it stick. Reuters
