By GREG RISLING, Associated Press WriterFri Jan 12, 5:52 PM ETMike Buday isn't married to his last name. In fact, he and his fiancee 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.
Mike Buday, right, and his wife Diana Bijon pose for a photograph Thursday, Jan. 11, 2007, in El Segundo, Calif. They claim the difficulty faced by a husband seeking to change his name is a violation of the equal protection guaranteed under the 14th Amendment. (AP Photo/Ric Francis) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Interesting....
Similar to Diana's views, even before I started dating, I knew I would ask my husband to carry my surname too. Both of us carrying the same "hyphenated" or "fused" surnames. Or, we both agree on a different surname. Simply explained, I say, "it's a merger, not a takeover" :-).Before I married Harold, I thought I would rather not be married if he couldn't understand how important it is to me. Officiating marriage is not that important to me. I value the actual relationship and promise of commitment to each other more, not the "one-day celebration", the right approach to just enjoy our relationship without matrimony. Nowadays, after approximately 2 years of living together, "man-woman" de facto relationship has the same rights as married couples anyway. Everything else can be covered with a living will. But as you know I recently happily married Harold. It means I am sure he is the one I want to grow old with and love for the rest of my life. He says daily this is exactly what he wanted from me too, so everyone's happy! :-) We say I love you more than 5 times a day to each other without force. As well as start every morning enjoying each other's company in bed for at least 5 minutes - hugs, kisses, touches, loving words, helping the other wake up, etc. Bliss! :-) Now we not only celebrate our monthly anniversary but also our wedding date! Yey! Yes, we've been celebrating our anniversary monthly too. It started on our second month together. He proposed to me in the second month of our relationship (really in the first month and 2 days, hehehe). We were young and passionately wanted to remember every important events in our lives. There were so many dates to celebrate and it felt wrong to only appreciate them once a year if we remember. It's like how people save their best plates for special occasions. I prefer to eat and serve using the best plates now and treat each day as a celebration. I am a firm believer or enjoying moments as they come, appreciating life and love now. So I suggested this, to combine all celebrations of our love for each other in one day, and appreciate it every month. I think it was the best idea. We celebrated it more than the yearly anniversary, gave us a special time every month to let each other know (more than usual) how we felt for each other. It helped to keep us in our honeymoon stage, hardly noticing that more than a decade has passed :-)....
But getting back on the topic, actually, I would have preferred to change and carry my mother's surname, while single. But it wasn't as important an issue to me, and I'm still a little traditionalist so I stuck with what I had. Hence the reason if our children wants to carry only one surname, I would encourage them to carry their father's.I have broached this topic of "automatically taking the husband's name after marriage" with a lot of people, I noticed (men and women in) some cultures are less accepting, even offended. Others have thought about it and decided on surnames they are using now.A conversation with a male colleague always comes back to mind, probably coz he was similar to Mike, open to less traditional thinking. I think it helped that he grew up with very open-minded parents. That's why I like bringing issues like this up, coz some people don't even consider to think of it as an option.
