The Case for Ending Paternity Fraud

By Dianna Thompson

 

Establishing paternity is fundamental to protecting the rights and well-being of children. Every child deserves the opportunity to know their biological father and to develop meaningful, loving relationships with both sides of their family whenever it is safe and appropriate.

Legal establishment of paternity provides important protections for both children and fathers. It gives fathers recognized legal rights and responsibilities while ensuring that children have access to important benefits, including inheritance rights, health and life insurance coverage through their father, Social Security and veterans’ benefits, and vital information about their paternal family medical history. Establishing paternity also helps preserve a child’s identity and family connections. 

 

Every year, men are wrongly assigned paternity for children they didn’t father due to:

• • In-Hospital Paternity Acknowledgements
  • Marital Paternity Fraud
  • Default Judgements

In-hospital paternity acknowledgments are a cornerstone of government policy and a requirement for any state seeking TANF funds. This is an example of good intentions gone wrong. If the program were well-designed and included DNA testing before asking a man to sign a “paternity acknowledgment,” it might be effective. However, a program that fails to screen out false paternity establishments may achieve temporary statistical success but imposes enormous enforcement burdens and emotional costs on the victims of false establishments.

 

For centuries, courts have relied on the marital presumption of paternity, a legal doctrine that presumes a child born during a marriage is the legal child of the husband. Historically, this presumption could be challenged only in limited circumstances, such as proof that the husband was sterile, impotent, or had no access to his wife during the period of conception.

The marital presumption of paternity originated in Roman law and was later incorporated into English common law more than 500 years ago. Its primary purpose was to promote family stability and protect children from the legal and social consequences associated with illegitimacy.

Although modern DNA testing can establish biological parentage with a high degree of accuracy, the marital presumption of paternity continues to influence family law in many jurisdictions. Depending on state law and the facts of a particular case, legal parentage may still be determined by this longstanding legal presumption rather than by genetic evidence alone.

Presumptions of paternity served a useful purpose in an era when the truth was difficult to obtain. However, we now live in a time where DNA testing, available for less than $200, can definitively determine whether a particular man is or is not the father of a particular child.

When applying for child support services or certain public assistance programs, mothers are generally required to identify the child’s alleged father so that paternity can be established and eligibility for benefits can be determined. However, in many jurisdictions, there is no affirmative legal requirement for a mother to disclose if another man may also be the child’s biological father. As a result, the alleged father, government agencies, and the courts may make paternity determinations without knowledge of other potential biological fathers. 

Applicants seeking child support services or certain public assistance benefits are generally required to provide the alleged father’s last known address. However, if the address provided is outdated or inaccurate, the summons to establish paternity may be sent to the wrong location, and the alleged father may never receive notice of the proceedings. If he does not appear in court because he was unaware of the case, the court may enter a default judgment establishing him as the legal father without his participation or knowledge, subject to the applicable laws and procedures in that jurisdiction.

 

California Governor Gray Davis vetoed AB 2240, legislation designed to strengthen safeguards against paternity fraud. In his veto message, Governor Davis acknowledged that “paternity fraud is a serious issue” but expressed concern that the bill’s provisions could delay paternity establishment, reduce child support collections, and jeopardize California’s ability to meet federal performance measures, placing up to $40 million in federal funding at risk.

States receive billions of dollars in federal funding through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and may also qualify for performance-based incentive payments tied to child support enforcement. As a result, states have a strong incentive to establish paternity promptly. While federal law encourages the establishment of paternity, it does not authorize knowingly identifying the wrong man as a child’s legal father. However, the current system provides inadequate safeguards to prevent or remedy erroneous paternity determinations

 

Federal TANF funding and performance-based child support incentives are tied, in part, to the number of paternity establishments achieved, rather than to whether those determinations are biologically accurate. With substantial federal funding at stake, states have a powerful financial incentive to maximize paternity establishment rates. This incentive structure places greater emphasis on meeting performance targets than on ensuring that the correct biological father is identified.

 

Paternity fraud can cause significant harm to both men and children in various ways: