What is paternity?
Paternity is person who the law recognizes as the child's father. This is the person who has the right to visitation, the person who has some say in the child's rearing and the person who has to pay support for the child.
How is paternity established?
There are two ways to establish paternity. The first is to sign the birth certificate as the father. The second is to file a petition in court. Married couples have a presumption of parentage where the child is considered to be the Husband's automatically. It is very difficult to disestablish paternity once it has been established and can usually only be done where there is fraud or mutual mistake. Further, the longer you wait, the less likely you are to be able to change it.
Usually most of these disputes wind up in Juvenile Court because that is where you go when you are not married. Juvenile Court will require that when a parent is establishing paternity or setting up child support that the father take a DNA test. This to avoid any future problems with father's requesting to bastardize their children years down the road. Further, once you have disestablished paternity, you will no loner be able to exercise visitation with the child and these consequences can have a devastating effect on a child.
