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Changing Name Changing: Framing Rules And The Future Of Marital Names, Elizabeth F. Emens
Changing Name Changing: Framing Rules And The Future Of Marital Names, Elizabeth F. Emens
Faculty Scholarship
What laws should govern spouses' names at marriage? If a man and a woman marry, should the woman's name change automatically? Or should the woman's name remain the same unless she goes through more or less complicated steps to change it? Contrary to convention, should the man's name change to the woman's? Should both their names be hyphenated? Many variations could be imagined.
The law of marital names has undergone a significant transformation over the past forty years. For about a hundred years of U.S. history, states required married women to take their husbands' names in order to engage in …