In a countersuit to his wife’s divorce petition, Goeppner asked the court to order a correction in the birth certificate, arguing that he and Mary were legally married–and both Goeppners–when Anthony was born. In the latest round of the couple’s bitter divorce proceedings Judge Carole Bellows of Cook County Circuit Court recently suggested compromising on the name Goeppner-Garetto. But Goeppner says hyphenation is unacceptable–unless his name comes last. Meanwhile, Anthony’s court-appointed attorney is recommending that the court honor the birth certificate as is. If the parties can’t sort out a solution, the case will probably go to trial early next year.
More disputes: No one knows how many couples take their name battles to court. Eight to 10 cases nationwide reach the appellate level each year, though hundreds are settled in lower courts, says Jeff Atkinson, who heads the American Bar Association’s child-custody committee. Divorce attorneys predict that disputes between biological parents will grow more common as women try to extend gender equality to their children’s names. Through much of the 1980s, the use of the father’s last name remained a given. As recently as 1986, an Illinois appellate court called a mother’s efforts to change her child’s last name part of a “scheme to destroy the father-child relationship.” Legally, parents can give their children any moniker–Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan–as long as it’s not for a fraudulent purpose. But courts also can step into the fray, ruling for the best interests of the child as they do in disputes over custody and visitation.
As Anthony’s case demonstrates, a name is more than just a name. “It’s a rather powerful weapon because there’s terrible ego involvement,” says Donald Schiller past chairman of the American Bar Association’s family-law section. Remember the rancor over Baby M, called Melissa by her biological parents and Sara by surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead? A divorcing parent invariably tends to see a court’s decision to give a child his or her surname as a sign of victory. Neil Kalter, director of the University of Michigan Center for the Child and the Family and author of “Growing Up with Divorce,” points to a tumultuous case he is now evaluating. The father believes the awarding of his last name “stands for vindication on sexual-abuse charges,” says Kalter, and the mother believes the awarding of her last name would “protect” and “disconnect” the child from the father.
Convention rules: Therapists and divorce lawyers argue that the key issue should be neither men’s rights nor women’s rights but continuity for the child–particularly if he is old enough to understand and write his name. At that age, a name switch becomes confusing, whether the result of divorce or subsequent remarriages. “It’s always simplest for the child when things go according to social convention,” says psychiatrist David Zinn, codirector of the Adolescent Psychiatry Program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. But legal experts say courts shun tradition and rule against fathers in cases involving neglect, abuse or abandonment.
By this reasoning, Garetto’s name could embarrass Anthony as he grows older: Goeppner’s lawyer, Jeffery Leving, says the boy may wonder later whether his father rejected him, and other people may wonder whether he is illegitimate. Garetto’s lawyer, Thomas Murphy, isn’t divulging his strategy, but may argue that there is no compelling reason to change the boy’s name. To Mary Doheny, Anthony’s court-appointed attorney, the issue is “dumb”; she would rather see both parents focusing on their relationships with each other and with Anthony. Barring a settlement, the court will have to determine whether the parents have merely chosen to make the name issue one more battleground of divorce. No one wants a family feud to leave a child caught in the cross-fire.
