Právo rodičov na zmenu mena dieťaťa a právo dieťaťa na zachovanie svojej identity

The article reacts to the existing legal state when the Name and Surname Act permits both the parents and the adopters as "legal parents" to apply for a change of their child's name. Among others it permits the administrative authority to decide on this matter without a child's approval, providing the child is below 15. Until the age of 15 years, administrative authorities do not ascertain a minor child's opinion regarding the change of his or her name at all and decide exclusively at request of the parents or upon a statement of the adopters. According to some provisions of the Name and Surname Act in two out of three cases the registry office even does not decide on authorization of a minor child's name and is only obliged to register changes reported by the parents in a prescribed manner. At the same time, the right to a name is one of partial rights of the summary right to identity, as granted to a child by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, communicated under No. 104/1991 Coll. This is a part of the Slovak national legal order, where the protection as a source of higher legal force, is granted to a child by the Constitutional Court of SR according to Article 125 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic. The right to protection of name is also a part of the right to private and family life, which is protected by Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The result of such contradictory wording of the act is an undesirable legal state, where a denial of generally accepted natural legal values brings a child to the position of an "object" of power manipulation by the parents without examination of the child's best interest as a fundamental principle of family law and without giving effect to the child's right to participate in his or her own education, as guaranteed by a series of international sources of law.