Bill to Remove Century-Old Surname Requirement for Women Advances

If you are married in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the current law dictates “the wife shall bear the surname of her husband.” However, this language may be changed after the Committee on Rules and Judiciary advanced legislation that would entitle either party within a marriage the right to use one another’s surname.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Alma Francis Heyliger, said the legislation was drafted to amend the 100-year-old law that required the obligation of “the female to have to carry her husband’s surname.”

The antiquated law was written and “rooted in a time where women did not have value. That the minute that they married their husband and took on their surname, during that time period, they became one and all the assets of the female … went to her husband,” Francis Heyliger said.

“According to how the law is written, basically what it does is it takes away a women’s right to choose simply because they were born female … it should no longer have any place in our books in the territory,” she added.

Committee members agreed and Steven Payne Sr. said though “it has been a tradition for like forever that women upon marrying a marrying someone was automatically expected to take a name of a beloved,” he supports the right to choose.