Being able to change your name, once in your life: Parliament definitively adopted on Thursday February 24 a bill allowing, with reduced formalities, to replace once in your life the name received at birth by that of the other parent .
The National Assembly adopted the text carried by LREM deputy Patrick Vignal by 69 votes for, one against and two abstentions, validating it on behalf of Parliament after its rejection by the Senate. The entry into force of the text is scheduled for July 1.
The law affects, via the name and its transmission, a foundation of civil status and individual identity. It thus opens up the possibility for any adult to ask, once in their life, to take, or add, the name of their other parent, by a simple procedure at the town hall, without having to formulate any justification.
A very simplified procedure compared to the long and uncertain one that exists today, which involves a decision from the Ministry of Justice, and must be justified: discredited or pejorative-sounding surname, desire to Frenchify one’s name or prevent the extinction of a rare surname…
The so-called reasons “affective”for those wishing to give up the name of a violent, incestuous, absent parent or any other personal reason are subject to the same procedures.
MP Aina Kuric (Agir group) had mentioned her personal case in the hemicycle. “I am the victim of an incestuous father (…) and I no longer wish to bear the name of my executioner. I wish to bear that of the woman who made me, and she is my mother”, she had launched, describing the current complex steps to achieve this. This law “of freedom” will give “a choice without imposing it” and “will make it possible to put an end to suffering, to appease families”pleaded its author Patrick Vignal.