What is "paternity"

The term “paternity” refers to the father of a child. If your lawyer talks to you about “establishing paternity”, they mean that they want to discover who a child’s biological father is.

Testing for Paternity
To find out if a man is the biological father of a child a paternity test will be used. Either the mother or father of a child can request a paternity test. Normally a DNA test is considered the most accurate, but a blood test can be used as well.

In many cases, the mother of a child may want a paternity test to collect child support, or a father of a child may want a paternity test so that he may gain visitation or custody rights to the child.

You Only Get Once Chance
You can only raise the issue of paternity once. If you’ve agreed to pay child support, you can’t get out of it later by claiming you are not the father of the child.

It’s very important that you get the advice from a qualified lawyer before you sign any paperwork dealing with the issue of paternity.