Three Reasons to Pause Before Taking Your Husband's Name

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Thursday, June 26, 2003 | TERRI CULLEN

[presidio9]

Like the first time you hear your new husband call you "my wife," or the first time someone refers to you as "Mrs.," signing your newly acquired married name is something some women look forward to their entire lives.

But there can be drawbacks to adopting your husband's last name, particularly if your hubby-to-be comes to the marriage laden with some unfortunate financial or legal baggage. As women enter marriages later in their lives, often with more established careers and greater assets, they are facing far more complicated financial choices than their moms and grandmoms. The decision to take your husband's name -- once a given -- is one of them.

[LizardQueen]

It not about it being a *man's* name, it's *your* name, the one you grew up with, the one you've always answered to, the one you've been all your life.

Getting rid of that is hard for some people. It has nothing to do with the origin of the name, just that it's been yours since birth.

I had mine for 30 years before I got married - that's nearly half my life. I ended up keeping it for the second half, too.

LQ

[LizardQueen]

Or he could take her name, but you wouldn't be cool with that, I guess :::lol::

But hey, they're still One then, right?

LQ

[LizardQueen]

She could always change it now, if she likes. It's a little more of a pain if not done as part of a marriage, but still doable.

LQ

[Dead Dog]

She's selfish because she is breaking tradition in order to remain an individual. In a sense, rejecting the tradition of marriage. It is a statement of values that reflects on the family.

[BibChr]

I predict this will be an asinine column.

Results after I read.

Dan

[rintense]

Gov. Jennifer Grandholm of Michigan... she asked her husband to take her last name and he did.

[Freebird Forever]

NEVER, EVER, Under any circumstances trust a women with three names or a hypenated name.

Not even this one?

Catherine Zeta-Jones (Douglas)

[ErnBatavia]

I will let you add some of your own.

Mrs. David Nelson is likely to get strip searched at the airport.

[GovernmentShrinker]

A good solution is to give girls their mother's surname and boys their father's. A high school friend of mine ended up doing this, and it seems perfectly natural. And it wouldn't be hard to get used to referring to a family by a pair of names (lots of uper crust British people have been operating with a hyphenated surname for many generations). And besides, hyphenation for kids using both parents' surnames is idiotic, as it's obviously only a one-generation solution (I have yet to encounter or read about ANYBODY crazy enough to continue that concept for a subsequent generation).

[SamAdams76]

There's an easy solution for the women out there. Just make sure you marry somebody who is financially stable and has good credit.

[ErnBatavia]

Janet Shalala Reno

[Dead Dog]

Would it even be worth it? I think she just ingores it, and it almost goes away.

I think of some of the crap I spouted off in college, the last thing I would want is my name holding me to account. And I was conservative.

[mewzilla]

I know women who've taken their husband's name and ended up in divorce court, sometimes more than once. Interestingly enough, of all the women I know who've kept their maiden names, none are divorced from their first and only spouses. As long as both spouses don't have a problem with whichever name is taken or kept, I don't see that it much matters :)

Best wishes, BTW :)

[Tamar1973]

I find it odd that someone will get a divorce and then retain the last name of the man they divorced.

One word: Demi Moore.

If you didn't establish a significant career until after you got married to your first husband, you would be in the same situation as someone who got married for the first time later in life: most people know you by a certain name, whether it's your maiden name or the name of your first husband. Either way, it would be confusing to your professional crowd (for a little while, at least) if you changed your name at that point.

I got married when I was still in college, I did the first name, maidien name, married last name for that year to create a transition and after a year or so, I quitely dropped the maiden name.

[RMDupree]

Hmmmm....then it must be that they don't want to go through the hassle of changing everything back to their maiden name. :)

[LizardQueen]

That's awfully complicated though - it would mean brothers and sisters would have different names. People can do what they want with them, but that would'nt have been the road I went down, had I had kids.

LQ

[Tamar1973]

Catherine Zeta-Jones (Douglas)

She is one of few exceptions. If she went by Catherine Jones, that is such a common name, she might as well be called John Doe, so I can understand interjecting the Zeta in there. (Although it's my understanding that Zeta is her middle name and Jones is her maiden name.

[Xenalyte]

That does get into a sticky situation.

My parents divorced very shortly after my little sister was born. My mother remarried about 18 months later.

When given the opportunity to choose as a teenager, I kept my father's name, and my stepfather adopted my sister, so she got his last name. (I did hyphenate, unaccountably and abominably, for a year of high school. Thank God I outgrew it. But then, that was when I was writing my name with little dots over the Is.)

I'm not entirely sure I made the right decision . . . my father's name rhymes with a few nasty things, but my stepfather's name rhymes with LOTS of nasty things.

[Dead Dog]

I'm guessing they kept their names for professional reasons? IMO, it doesn't matter if they value the institution more than their sense of self.