Emma v. Evans

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The divorced parents in this case had a dispute over changing their children's surname. Within months of the divorce, the husband discovered that the wife had modified the children’s surname from Emma to Evans-Emma on school and health-care records. He filed a motion seeking an order to prevent the use of the name Evans-Emma. The wife then filed a cross-motion seeking to change the children’s surname from Emma to Evans. The trial court denied the husband's request and granted the wife's. The appellate panel gave great weight to the fact that the parents agreed to joint legal custody, noting that such custody requires parents to share the responsibility of making major child-rearing decisions. In the panel’s view, the decision to change a child’s name was a significant matter that required, at a minimum, an attempt to agree. The panel reversed the trial court’s order and remanded for consideration of the wife's name-change request based on the best-interests-of-the-child standard without a presumption in her favor. After its review, the Supreme Court held that the party seeking to alter the surname jointly given to the child at birth bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the change is in the child’s best interest. Irrespective of whether the parents were married at the time of the child’s birth, the best-interests-of-the-child test should be applied in a renaming dispute without a presumption in favor of the custodial parent’s decision to change the jointly given surname of the child. View "Emma v. Evans" on Justia Law