Separated parents’ three year court battle over son’s surname
A separated mother and father have spent three years and thousands of dollars arguing over their son’s name.
The Family Court is a place of enormous heartache. Parents battle for their children’s safety, their emotional wellbeing and the right to have relationships with both parents.
Or…it’s a place where a three year old boy’s mother and father fight over his name.
The little boy’s parents – the court has given them the pseudonym Ms Reynolds and Mr Sherman have been to court a total of four times to argue over their son’s surname, The Brisbane Times reports. Ms Reynolds, who was in a month-long relationship with Mr Sherman – wants the boy to keep her name. The boy’s father, Mr Sherman, who only learnt of his son’s existence when the Child Support agency contacted him, wants the boy’s surname to be hyphenated: Sherman-Reynolds.
Ms Reynolds has had full custody of their son since birth, and Mr Sherman sees him a few times a a week.
Four court cases. And for what?
The case has been to court four times – twice in the Family Court and twice to appeal – with the mother arguing that a hyphenated name is a “nuisance”, “difficult to spell” and that the boy’s father is insisting on it simply to antagonise her.
She also argued that the boy’s father denied paternity at first, and that a hyphenated surname would be a constant reminder of his ‘illegitimacy’.
But in its final ruling, the court argued that many children today have hypehated surnames, and ordered the mother to pay $8000 of the father’s court costs..
The courts shouldn’t have to deal with trivial cases
Anyone who’s spent any time in the Family Court knows its chambers are overloaded with matters of grave importance surrounding children’s safety and wellbeing. New cases can take months or even years to come before a judge or magistrate, during which time families are left to suffer without resolution.
Which is why cases like this are so infuriating. A name simply isn’t important. One of those parents should have had the smarts and the compassion to simply back down before putting each other through that level of trauma and disruption, and use up court resources that could have been better spent elsewhere.
It’s terrifying to think what will happen when the little boy in this broken family is older and disputes arise over where he will go to school or what after-school or weekend activities he’ll be involved in. If the mother wants him to learn violin and the father wants cricket, I can imagine all hell will break loose.
As anyone involved in an acrimonious split knows, there’s are many times you simply have to roll over and play dead on any number of issues, just to minimise the animosity. When you co-parent, you can’t have everything your own way. You need to pick your battles on a day to day basis, and pick them with even greater discretion when it comes to deciding which to take to court.
Use the court only when you really need it
That’s not to say the Court should never be used – when a child’s wellbeing is being severely negatively impacted, or when a parent is preventing the child from participating in activities or opportunities that benefit them, then it can be the only option. But no kid ever suffered from a surname.
The one good thing to come out of this is that the plaintiff – the mother – was fined $8000 in court costs. In my mind, that’s not a judgement on whether she was right or wrong about wanting to preserve her son’s original surname – perhaps her arguments were legitimate – but a reminder that a name is trivial, and nowhere near important enough to take up the court’s time.
With luck she’ll remember the sting of that payment when she weighs up whether or not to go back to Family Court over a squabble over their son’s haircut.
Credit: kidspot.com.au
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