Marriage of Karayan & Serwer CA1/4

Filed 12/24/20 Marriage of Karayan & Serwer CA1/4 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT DIVISION FOUR

In re the Marriage of PAUL KARAYAN and LAURA SERWER. PAUL KARAYAN, Appellant, A160107 v. LAURA SERWER, (San Mateo County Super. Ct. No. 17 FAM 03160) Respondent.

Paul Karayan (Paul) appeals from an order that changes the last name of the six-year-old child of his former marriage with Laura Serwer (Laura) from Serwer Karayan to Serwer-Karayan. Laura’s surname will thus no longer be one of the boy’s middle names but part of his new, hyphenated surname. Although the requisite evidence in the record is meager, we shall affirm because the evidence satisfies the deferential standard of review. Factual and Procedural History Paul and Laura married in September 2010; their son was born in December 2013; and they separated in May 2017. The court entered a bifurcated judgment dissolving their marriage in December 2018 and a final judgment on reserved issues in June 2019. In August 2019, they agreed to share physical and legal custody of their son. Paul later married Jamie Pereyda (Jamie), who began using his surname.

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In August 2019, the parties discussed with a coparenting counselor the issue of emergency-contact forms. Their son then had two middle names, of which the second, Serwer, is Laura’s surname, which she retained during the marriage. Laura asked Paul to agree to change their son’s surname to Serwer-Karayan; he declined. In early September, the parties discussed the surname dispute with the counselor and agreed on a protocol for using their son’s full name on school and extracurricular forms if possible. Later that month, Laura filed a request for order (RFO) asking the court to order (1) that the boy’s surname be changed to Serwer-Karayan and (2) that, on all forms, both parents use their son’s full name and list each other as first or second emergency contact. Laura based her request on a declaration alleging that Paul “often fills out emergency and contact forms for [the child]’s providers and leaves ‘Serwer’ out” and “lists his wife [Jamie] as a contact, sometimes to the exclusion of me,” while sometimes giving Jamie’s last name as “Karayan.” Her memorandum also cited a passage in In re Marriage of Schiffman (1980) 28 Cal.3d 640, 647 (Schiffman) noting that use of the maternal surname may support the mother-child relationship. Paul opposed the name-change request but declared that he had no substantive objection to the two other requests. He insisted that no one had ever experienced confusion about Laura’s and Jamie’s respective roles and contended that Laura’s motive for requesting the order was a desire to prevent Jamie’s recognition as the boy’s stepmother, noting an incident in which Laura crossed out the designation “stepmom” next to Jamie’s name on a school form and, next to her own name, wrote “[child’s first name]’s only mom.” Paul added that his family fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide and that his son is the lone member of his generation who can carry on the Karayan surname.