Sunday, August 12, 2007

How about this choice?

Quebec law won't permit newlywed Caroline Parent to take her husband's name. Adopted shortly after the creation of the Quebec charter of rights and designed to bring Quebec civil code in compliance with the equality provisions of the charter, the law restricts legal name changes to exceptional circumstances only, disallowing women to adopt their husband's name at marriage.

That doesn't leave much choice for Caroline, who wants to hold on to the tradition. She may either forfeit her dream of everyone in her family having the same last name or look for a loophole, such as seeking legal name change in another province or in the US, if not just moving out of Quebec altogether.

Caroline choose to stay and fight. Her first step was to send a letter to the Premier Jean Charest.
She hopes to spark a public debate on the issue, but before taking any other action, Parent is waiting to hear from the government. “I’ill wait and see. I don’t know what step will be next because I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“All I am asking for is that women have the choice to take the name they want,” she said.
According to the family law professor Alain Roy, the law disallowing marital surnames was viewed as a highly symbolic gain for the feminist movement as it "translated equality into name attribution". As usually, such "progressive" reform came with no way to opt out.

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