First person
Around 10 years ago, my wife and I went to my son Michael's primary school for a routine appointment with his teacher. As the teacher talked about his progress, I noticed something wrong about the folder of his recent work, which was lying on her desk. From birth, Michael, who was eight at the time, had used my surname: Yeats. But the folder proclaimed his name as "Michael Bailey".
This, of course, came as a surprise. But there was no great mystery. Bailey is the surname of my former partner - Michael's mother. She and I had split up five years before after she had chosen to move out to live with her lover. Since then, Michael and his younger brother and older sister had lived half the time with me in their old family home and the other half with their mother in her new one.
Despite some tensions, the arrangement had worked quite well. And although becoming a lone parent for three or four days every week and just alone for the rest had placed me under emotional and financial strain, this eased wonderfully after I met and then married someone new. She had thrown herself selflessly into the role of stepmother and, at the time of that school appointment, was seven months pregnant with the first of the three children we have together. We were optimistic for the future of our blended family life. Now a cloud of foreboding had gathered.
The following day I learned the full story from Michael's head teacher. My ex had deceived her into believing I had agreed to the surname change. Michael's books and records had been altered accordingly. I was furious. I still am. Michael, now a young man, continues to use his mother's surname. Although he and I get along very well, the episode has left me with an open wound and created a dark and silent space at the heart of my relationships with all three of my older children; a space we all know is there, but dare not mention.
Some history is needed here. This saga really begins when my ex and I were expecting our first child, Michael's older sister. We talked a lot about what she would be called. Mostly we discussed our baby daughter's forenames, which we took ages to settle on. The decision about her surname was easier, but the significant point is that we believed a decision was required.
We questioned the convention for children to automatically take their father's surname. We also thought it would be nice if our child bore both our surnames, yet were reluctant to give her a double-barrelled name that might be a burden. We resolved the issue by having both our surnames on our daughter's birth certificate - mine first, her mother's second - but agreeing that for everyday purposes she would use only her mother's.
Then Michael came along. Like his sister, he had both parents' names on his birth certificate, but they were written there in reverse order and the agreement was that he would use my surname, exactly as his sister used his mother's. There were two reasons for this. One was fairness - it was, so to speak, my turn to have a child named after me. The other was to make my father happy. Although he had other grandchildren, none bore the Yeats surname, and both my ex and I knew that Michael doing so would mean a lot to him.
When our third child - another boy - was born, we surnamed him in the same way as his sister. In this, we were following the "taking turns" precedent and had we had a fourth child he or she would have been named after me. The separation ended that possibility.
But it did not end the arrangements my ex and I had made regarding the three children's surnames - at least, not as far as I was concerned. I was content with the existing arrangement, so why would I have even thought about it? The most important thing to me was that they, and my relationships with them, were as happy and undisturbed as possible.
Given this, some might wonder why the unasked-for change in Michael's surname mattered to me - and still matters - quite so much. After all, I had no problem with his brother and sister taking their mother's name, so why did I react so strongly against Michael's surname now matching theirs? Wouldn't it have been more sensible to have given all three the same surname in the first place? What if Michael had disclosed to his mother that he wanted to use the same everyday surname as his siblings but had felt unable to tell me? If so, shouldn't his wishes have been paramount?
Such questions are perfectly fair. My answers to them, though, illustrate why this story is about much more than Michael's surname. His being called Michael Yeats was an expression of principles: the egalitarian parenting ones his mother and I shared, and that of respect for my father's different values. Her going behind my back to change Michael's surname from Yeats to Bailey represented her pointed abandonment of those principles and also a decision on her part to try to push me to the margins of Michael's life; and, by implication, those of his brother and sister, too. Her violation of our long-standing agreement signalled to me that she could no longer be trusted and to our children that she was the senior parent; that she was the one whose wishes took priority, that she was the one in charge.
The children continued to spend half their time in my care and half in their mother's. But everything else began to change, and in ways I could do little to control. I had been the victim of a piece of premeditated malice that hurt, angered and frightened me. I made a furious phone call, sent a furious fax and wrote a furious letter. They did me no good. My ex wanted my surname excised from Michael's life in favour of hers. I wanted the status quo restored. Her deceit underlined how intent she was on getting her way.
Michael's head teacher apologised for being taken in, but didn't know what she could do. The local education authority was clueless. I went to a solicitor and discovered that as an unmarried father I was not recognised in law. But though it wasn't hard to obtain "parental responsibility" under the Children Act, all it conferred on me was the right to pursue my grievance through the courts. A few thousand pounds later, I abandoned all such thoughts - legal precedent was ambiguous and did I really want to put Michael and his siblings through the ordeal litigation involves?
In the meantime, Michael's head teacher imposed a settlement: our son would be known in school by both his surnames, exactly as they appeared on his birth certificate. And so he became Michael Bailey Yeats with no hyphen, though on his exercise books this was shortened for reasons of space to "Michael B-Y". Appreciating the head's predicament, I decided I could live with this. My ex, though, was not pacified. During the next school year, she and her new partner - the head of a different primary school - pressured Michael's class teacher during a consultation to blank out the "Yeats" or "Y" half of his name as it appeared on his books. Only after the teacher told me, and I informed the head, was it restored.
One day, it was discovered that the "Yeats" half of his name had been Tippexed from the class register. The teacher had no idea how it had happened, but getting hold of the register would not have been difficult to any parent who knew their way around the school. At the time, Michael attended an after-school activity at which a separate register was taken. Several times when I went to fetch him, I found the "Yeats" crossed out at the insistence of his mother, leaving me to explain why it should be put back.
Michael's mother's crusade was not limited to his school. One year, she took him and his brother and sister abroad for a holiday. I had plans to do the same shortly after their return. When my ex delivered the children's passports to my house, I discovered that Michael Yeats had again been re-christened Michael Bailey.
Still, now that I had parental responsibility I was legally entitled to have it changed back again at the passport office. Or so I thought. Having filled in the forms and sat in the queue, I learned that only a child's mother is allowed to alter the surname on a passport, despite the form stating that this power could be exercised by any parent with parental responsibility (the anomaly has since been expunged).
I have enough stories like this to fill a book. But the thing to stress is the dilemma I found myself in, and still do. I wanted to fight what my ex and her new partner had done, yet knew that fighting risked making matters worse for Michael and the rest of my family. I wanted, and still want, Michael to understand why it matters to me. I wanted to know how he felt and what his wishes were. I still do. But what if he becomes angry with me? What if he takes his mother's side? What might the consequences be of letting sound and light into that dark, silent space?
In the course of Michael's secondary education, my ex-partner completed her victory in her war over his surname. It's a complicated tale, but the gist of it is that changes of school require the filling in of forms and that, once again, my ex was more ruthless than me. My attempts to challenge the outcome were met with reticence and suspicion by the teachers and administrators concerned. Persisting only made matters worse. In their eyes I was potential trouble: a Fathers for Justice type; a slighted Superman.
What conclusions can be drawn from this tale? Its plainest outcome is that I must live with the fact that Michael is unlikely to answer to my surname and my now late father's surname ever again. And its moral? I'll leave that to readers to decide.
· All names have been changed