DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Would You Take Your Wifes Name When Married?

This guy would:

ACLU Helps Man Who Wants To Take Wife's Name

POSTED: 11:14 am EST January 16, 2007

LOS ANGELES -- Mike Buday isn't married to his last name. In fact, he and his fianceé decided before they wed that he would take hers.

But Buday was stunned to learn that he couldn't simply become Mike Bijon when they married in 2005.

As in most other states, that would require some bureaucratic paperwork well beyond what a woman must go through to change her name when marrying.

Instead of completing the expensive, time-consuming process, Buday and his wife, Diana Bijon, enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union and filed a discrimination lawsuit against the state of California. They claim the difficulty faced by a husband seeking to change his name violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

"Diana and I feel strongly about gender equality for both men and women," Buday said. "I think the most important thing in all of this is to bring it to a new level of awareness."

Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU in Southern California, said it is the first federal lawsuit of its kind in the country. "It's the perfect marriage application for the 17th century," Rosenbaum said. "It belongs in the same trash can as dowries."

Only six states -- Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York and North Dakota -- have statutes establishing equal name-change processes for men and women when they marry. In California and other states, men cannot choose a different last name while filing a marriage license.

In California, a man who wants to take his wife's name must file a petition, pay more than $300, place a public notice for weeks in a local newspaper and then appear before a judge.

Because of Buday's case, a California state lawmaker has introduced a bill to put a space on the marriage license for either spouse to change names.

The Census Bureau does not keep figures on how many U.S. men are taking their brides' names. But clearly it happening more and more. Milwaukee County, Wis., Clerk Mark Ryan estimated that one in every 100 grooms there now takes the name of his wife.

Bijon, 28, approached Buday about the idea when they were dating. She had no brothers but wanted to prolong the family name. Buday, a 29-year-old developer of interactive advertising, was estranged from his own father and was not attached to his own last name.

"I knew immediately it was pretty important to her or else she wouldn't have brought it up," Buday said.

At one point, the couple tried the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a name change. But Buday said he was told by a woman behind the counter: "Men just don't do that type of thing."

Couples who want to hyphenate or combine their names also must endure the lengthy court procedures in California. One of the more notable examples was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who went to court to fuse his last name, Villar, with his wife's, Raigosa, when they married in 1987.

Laws giving women an easy choice of names were largely a byproduct of the feminist movement. A 2004 Harvard University study found that the number of college-educated women who kept their surnames upon marriage rose from about 3 percent in 1975 to nearly 20 percent in 2001.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press.

If my last name was the same as a device that squirts water up your butt I would....

Got a feeling that this "guy" may enjoy female domination.

Someday this will be as commonplace as transgender identification and men carrying purses.....geez, no wonder the Islamists hate us!

I may change my full name to just a symbol.

Absolutely not Lee....

Some traditions need to stay the same...I dispise the aclu..(.AntiChristLoversUnion).

If men want to tell the world they don't have a set, they should be able to.

Damn right... Women should just be happy WE gave them the right to vote...

I'm sort of with the ACLU on this one ... (yuck I need to take a shower) ... but I don't really understand the need for a lawsuit.

I mean if he wants to do it, he CAN do it. His only beef is that it's harder to do for a guy. Well, when you're less than 1 percent of the population that usually does something the other way, it usually IS a little bit harder to do. I don't see why the rest of the world has to change applications and the like to conform to less than one percent of the population. That's what I really hate about today's society. We have to make things equal for the lowest common denominator.

We were talking about the way it is pronounced, Missy.

it still looks more like his name is pronounce boo day and not ba day

He's still probably tired of getting booday calls.

and for that reason alone, if I were him I'd change the last name.

Dijon is mustard. He's gonna be named after a dog.

I'm confused what they mean by "a lot more than that a woman goes through". It was not hard for me... did I do it wrong? All I did was change my name on my SSN card... I was told that was all I had to do.

Yeah I saw that too. We went to the office and showed them the cirtificate thing and that was it.

Well if Hank doesn't re-sign you better change your name quick.

I don't see why it's such a problem to use either name...hers or his. And, this thing with you guys about him not being a man is retarded. I understand how she feels...I'm the last hope to carry on my family name. Truly, though, I would like my mother's maiden name more than my Dad's. She should have kept her name.

Why is it easy for the woman and not for the man? They don't give reasons...just that "it isn't done."

Quote:

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Why is it easy for the woman and not for the man? They don't give reasons...just that "it isn't done."

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There is no "reason".. it's just always been done one way and never been challenged... that's how things like this get changed... I bet you 99.9% of the people in California and around the country weren't even aware that this was a "problem"...

I wouldn't change my last name. BTW, my wife took mine when we got hitched, but I told her more than once that it wouldn't bother me if she kept her maiden name. I mean, it was HER NAME for 36 years.

And, that's cool. She can take yours, she can keep hers, but you can't take hers. Makes no sense.

Are you disagreeing with me, woman?

I'm saying I wouldn't change my last name... I wouldn't do it for any reason; why should I... why should anyone?
She wanted my last name cuz she's a bit old fashioned that way... I told her it was her call, I didn't much care one way or the other.

Umm, no. I was still trying to figure out WHY he couldn't take her last name.

My fault...sorry dear, I was wrong.








I now say that without even thinking about it.

My wife took my last name. She is known as Mrs. GMdawg

Bwahahahaaa! That would be better than....oops, nevermind.

So, it's my DUTY to take a name that isn't even mine? No thanks. It's a stupid tradition, IMO. I say let people do what they want. Plenty of women keep their names these days. Makes certain things easier.

::sends flowers to kings wake::