Court gives mom another chance to name her son

[Kire]

Court gives mom another chance to name her son

Thursday, December 16, 2004
BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff

Reaffirming a 1995 decision that overturned a 600-year-old tradition of naming children after their fathers, the New Jersey state Supreme Court ruled yesterday that when parents disagree about their child's last name, the one who is the primary caregiver ordinarily gets to decide.

The ruling gives Kathleen Ronan of Holland Township, a nurse who argued her case before the high court, another chance to give her last name to her son, now 6. Ronan, who has raised the boy from birth, wants to change his name from Brendan Peter Adely, as it is listed on the birth certificate, to Brendan Adely Ronan.

The high court stopped short of ordering the change but ruled that two lower courts misapplied the law when they turned Ronan down. It sent the case back to family court for another hearing using standards the justices established in a historic 1995 decision.

That ruling said six centuries of law and tradition in favor of naming children after their fathers "had been overtaken by society's recognition of full equality for women." It allowed Karen Deremer of Washington Borough in Warren County to give her last name to her 3-year-old son, Scott. Days later, the child's father, Alan Gubernat, fatally shot the boy and himself at his Pennsylvania home.

More: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1103180019113900.xml

[Kindigger]

1. Court makes it unnecessary

...for genealogists to spend time searching for a non-existent marriage license in New Jersey. :)

[DemBones DemBones]

2. What a horrible ending to that earlier case.

I have great difficulty feeling any sympathy for people who kill their own kids. I know they are sick but it's a terrible act.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. I don't.

I agree it's a terrible thing to do, but it's something I suspect that I myself would have to be pushed less to do han many other, less terrible, crimes.

That's not to say that people who kill their children and survive shouldn't spend the rest of their lives, or at least most thereof, in jail, though.