Laws on Ordering a Paternity Test

When are Paternity Tests Ordered?

• Paternity testing to determine a child's biological father can be ordered by a court any time paternity is in dispute or in question. The most common time when court-ordered paternity testing takes place is at the request of the child's mother for purposes of acquiring child support. In most states, when a child receives state assistance, a government agency such as the attorney general's office will avidly pursue paternity identity so that funds are not received by a child at a detriment to the tax payers. However, a putative (assumed) father can also request paternity testing if he feels that a child may (or may not) be his. Once paternity is established, this not only makes the child's father responsible for financial support; it also gives him the same rights and responsibilities in custody matters that are given to fathers of children produced in wedlock.
  
  

Unwed Couples: Parental Acknowledgment

• Court-ordered paternity testing may be avoided entirely when an unmarried couple sign a form that acknowledges the child's paternity -- usually, this form is presented to the couple in the hospital at the time a child is born. Once this form is signed it is filed with the court and is legally binding. If a man later finds out that he is not in fact a child's biological father, he may still be held legally accountable for supporting the child.
  
  

Wedded Couples: Denial of Paternity

• The issue of paternity can even be a sticky subject when couples are married. A woman's extra-marital lover, should he suspect that he is the father of her child, can seek an order for paternity testing from the court (generally, if a child is born in a marriage, a woman's husband is the "assumed" father of that child). In such circumstances, the child's biological father can be named the legal father if he signs an acknowledgment of paternity and a woman's husband also signs a form that denies paternity. Absent a denial of paternity, one of the child's biological parents would have to seek a court order to determine paternity.
  
  

Establishing Paternity After a Father's Death

• Paternity testing can also be accomplished after a child's putative father passes away so that the child can receive government benefits or receive part of the father's estate as a pretermitted heir (born after the will was drafted). In most cases, DNA testing will be conducted on the mother, child and the father's closest living relatives to determine paternity within a high degree of probability. Methods of determining paternity absent a living putative father -- or a putative father who refuses to undergo paternity testing -- are established on a state-by-state basis.
  
  

Can a At-Home Paternity Testing Be Considered?

• There are many home DNA testing kits that are sold for a low cost that allow couples to take cheek swabs of themselves and their child and submit them to a local laboratory. However, the court will not permit these results to be used for purposes of establishing paternity; only a facility that is court-approved may be used. Additionally, DNA samples are subject to the "chain of evidence" rule -- in other words, they must be accounted for at all times by a disinterested third party (such as a laboratory technician) from the time they are collected to the time they are processed and the report submitted to the court. At-home DNA testing kits are for "curiosity testing" only.