In order to change a child’s name, the consent of all persons who have parental responsibility for the child is necessary. This usually means that a mother cannot change the name of her children following separation from their father without the father’s consent.
Only in exceptional circumstances, can the father’s consent be overridden by the court and this week His Honour Judge Duggan, sitting as a High Court Judge, permitted a mother to change the surname of her three year old twins following what he found to be “bizarre conduct” on the part of their father.
In Re: F (children; contact, name, parental responsibility) [2004] EWFC42, the court heard that the father has maintained a blog on the internet in which, the Judge said, he presented himself as a victim but described the mother of his children as a “drug addicted, alcoholic surrogate who has suffered from sexually transmitted diseases”.
Normally, the name of a child is an important link to an absent father. The authorities refer to the importance of maintaining the link with the biological father. As a result, the court rarely gives permission to change children’s names.
However, in this case, His Honour Judge Duggan stated “I am persuaded that the protection of the children does require me to maintain their ….change of name. I am persuaded that the desirable preservation of a symbol of a paternal link through the preservation of the surname has to give way to the protection of the children from the father’s publication steps. I cannot allow a situation in which the children at an older age and their friends can chance upon web based insults to the mothers, descriptions of the penis, or anything else that the father decides to publish from time to time in association with their name. It seems I cannot realistically stop the father’s activities at source but I can stop the harmful consequences, which are, of course associated with the identification of this material alongside the names of the children. In this context, in the children’s best interests, it is necessary and proportionate to allow their change of name”.
In addition to calling the children’s mother “a drug addicted alcoholic surrogate who has suffered from sexually transmitted diseases” within the blog the father also had made comments upon the mother’s choice of local nursery for the children and had also published a medical report about one of the children and discussed details of their conception. The children were born after a fertilisation process involving two anonymous donors.
Unilaterally, the father decided to place on the public web all of the details of the biological origin of the children. On the web, that information is available for the world to see, and, when they are a little older, for the boys to find themselves. One of the twins had a deformity of his penis which needed surgical intervention. The father posted on the internet a medical report about the child containing the child’s name and full details on the deformity in question.
Although contact with the children had initially been good, the Judge said that the father had not seen the children for a year and that there was not now any indirect contact. In view of the father’s “bizarre conduct” the Judge was able to overrule the father’s objection to the name change.
If you would like to contact our team about Legal Aid for victims of domestic abuse or any other family law matter, then please call 01726 74433 or email family.staustell@stephens-scown.co.uk.