The law relating to changing a woman’s name

Dear Mrs Macaulay,

My boss recently got married and she explained to me that she kept her maiden name and took her husband’s name, but did not hyphenate it, as it allows her to not have to change out her identity documents — ID, drivers license, passport, TRN, etc.

This is now my intention too, as I am getting married soon. However, my counsellor who is a pastor, indicated that having both my last name and my husband’s name, without hyphenating, is not legally accepted, and as such he is not respecting my wishes.

I would like to know from a current and legal standpoint if he is indeed correct, or is my boss up to date on her rights and legal information where this choice is concerned?

Let me say at once and as clearly as I can, your counsellor/pastor is completely wrong with his statement that to have both your surname and your husband’s surname, without hyphenating them, is not legally accepted, and that he is not inclined to accept your wish to do so.

His denial of your wishes would result in his breaching your legal right to choose what name you wish to be identified by after your marriage, and this is unlawful.  He would be doubly wrong because he would be basing his denial on his lack of knowledge of the law, and yet using his position as your pastor and the authority of that position to unlawfully impose his wrongful denial of your legal right to choose your own names for the purpose of your identity after your marriage.

The correct legal position in Jamaica, as it is in all common law countries (which have not changed the common law in this regard by legislation) is that a woman, upon her marriage, has the right to either add her husband’s surname to her own with or WITHOUT a hyphen; or drop her own and adopt only her husband’s surname; or keep her own surname only. Because it is the common law that the choice is the woman’s.  The practice which hitherto was universally practised of the adoption of the husband’s surname was only a social one, imposed when the rights of women and especially married women were completely suppressed by men, until fundamental human right principles came to be accepted as the norm.

There is no law in Jamaica which requires a woman, upon marriage, to change her surname to that of her husband or require her , if she decides to add the husband’s surname to hers, to hyphenate them.  The Marriage Act  does not have any provision in it requiring a woman upon her marriage to do anything about her surname.  The common law position is that the name a woman uses after her marriage for her legal and actual identity is a matter for her alone to decide, and states all who have duties to ensure that her names are entered in legal records, and must act as she has decided and stated upon sole legal choice.  I have listed the legal choices above; and no one has the power or authority to deny her choice of any of the above choices.  Anyone who does or attempts to do so would be acting unlawfully by blocking a woman’s legal right to choose what name/names she wants to be identified by after her marriage.

If your marriage ceremony has already occurred and you still wish to use your surname with your husband’s with no hyphen, then you can do the change by deed poll if your pastor acted on his incorrect ruling of the legal matter and denied you the joinder you wanted. Then, by right, your pastor should pay for you to have the deed poll done and any  further and consequential costs to change any of your legal and formal ID documents, if you had already changed them as his wrongful act may have caused you to do.

Please note that it is not only your pastor(s) who must not put themselves in his embarrassing wrongful position, but all government  ministries and agencies, commercial, educational, and health institutions, in fact all bodies of any kind in the country, and no one, however high their standing in the country and society, can dictate to any woman about to be married or already married what and how her married surname(s) should be.  The legal choice,  I repeat, is solely hers, and once she starts to use the surname(s) she chooses immediately after her marriage is solemnised, that is her legal identity for the rest of her life or until life changes occur which necessitate a further change.

I have stated the legal position which has been in place for many, many years and all non-lawyers ought to seek legal advice before they pronounce on a legal matter especially when they are in a position of some authority and their decisions and actions affect the lives of those they are supposed to serve.  They commit a tort by so acting and can be liable, as I have intimated, for consequential loss and damage.

I hope that I have clarified the position for you and please make sure that your pastor  reads this, so that the does not do any further harm by his wrongful depiction of the law.

All the very best.

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public, and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide private, personal responses.