Members of the House Judiciary Committee passed a bill that modifies the notification procedure for changing the name of a minor child. Greg Sattizahn is with the Unified Judicial System. He says currently, if a parent lives in a county for six months, they can petition to change a child’s name. The only requirement is that notice is published in a legal newspaper in that county. He says this doesn’t work well for notifying another parent who lives in a different location.
“And so the proposal would require personal service of the name change upon another parent, assuming that person still has parental rights over the child, so that they have the opportunity to appear at the hearing, and really just allow them to state their case,” Sattizahn says.
House Bill 1063 passed unanimously and now heads to the House floor for further debate.