Hi all, I have 2 issues and hope to hear from others who have gone through the process:
1. I am singaporean and my husband is Swiss and we were married in singapore. Now that we are living in Switzerland, we need to get our marriages legalised there before we can celebrate our church wedding in Switzerland. We cannot seem to get it legalised till I am registered in Switzerland for my permit b. Doesn't Switzerland recognise our marriage regardless of whether I'm living there or not? Can't I celebtate my burn wedding there (to a Swiss) if I weren't living there permanantly?
When we got married I'm singapore (civil) my husband wasn't required to be a resident. I would think it would be similar over in Switzerland.
2. Our son was born in singapore and has a hyphenated last name. The Swiss are now saying he may not be able yo be registered with the last name he has on his passport and birth certificate. How can we try to explain that we do not wwant my son to have different last names depending on which country he is in?
Also, my husband and one have both gotten a deed poll in singapore after our marriage to have hyphenated last names which we want for our family. This is ok for me as the Swiss recognise my deed poll and allow for me to have our hyphenated last name. But for my husband they need to see if it can be processed.
When I married my first wife in the US while on vacation, mine was recognized immediately we returned, but for her (Swiss) it took six months, so for that time I was married and she not! (hers was later back-dated once they recognized it).
In Switzerland, only one last name is allowed for children, and it must be that of one of the parents, not a combination.
My kids have different surnames on their Swiss and Portuguese IDs. From the moment one of the parent is Swiss, a hyphenated surname or a double one is not possible. There's no way around it.
I understand that a child may only have either parents last name. But if both parents or one of them legally has a hyphenated last name, what happens then? Simply drop half of it?
With the new law, the hyphenated option is not allowed even for the spouses. I know, as I got married 6 weeks ago!
Kids can bear:
- the maiden name of the mother
- the maiden name of the father
- all kids from the same set of parents must share the same surname
But you can bend the rule a little: while officially, on the official records (etat civil) only one name is allowed, you can chose to have the hyphenated surname on your ID papers, which is what I did. But this is possible only for the spouse, not for the kids. It is called a 'nom d'alliance' in French.
As I have kids from two different fathers, having an hyphenated surname was my only option to bear the surname of all my kids, which was important to me (and to the kids as well. My son from a first union was not taking it well that I could not share his surname anymore).
Just to add for anyone new, last year we did get my son's official swiss documents with hyphenated surnames by showing that his "last name" has been registered overseas (in his foreign birth certificate/passport) as hyphenated. our consulate in geneva did that and the canton where our family is registered accepted it so we all get to keep our hyphenated family name!
My wife and son are Swiss and bear her surname. We were contemplating changing to a unified compound name in the US where we were married, but sounds like that would only allow us to have hyphenated names in our passports and not our son's.
What if I legally changed my name to our combined last names and they change last names to mine upon registering marriage in Switzerland? Or stated hypothetically, if my name before marriage happened to be '1st name-2nd name', and I married a woman with '1st name' as surname, would Switzerland stop us from all taking the husband's last name as the common family name? I mean that's traditional right?
I always feel sorry for those kids who’s parents lumbered them with an entire football team’s worth of first names or similar. Did they ever consider the problems they were going to give their kids when they had to fill in forms that required their full names? That’s even worse than being labelled something like Fifi Trixibell.
Sorry, but I don't think the link clarifies the issue at all. It's clear if A wants to marry B, the law wants the union to produce A or B but not AB/BA. But if AB pre-exists the marriage and marries C, the same law should produce AB or C (not A or C; B or C). This is my question. The OP whom I quote seems to show a similar example.