Paternity

A paternity action is necessary when the parties have a minor child or children but were never legally married at the time the child was born. In parentage cases, also called "paternity cases," the court makes orders that say who the child's legal parents are. For unmarried parents, parentage of their children needs to be established legally.


Learn more below.

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Establishing parentage is necessary before custody, visitation, or child support will be ordered by a court. If a father does not admit that he is the parent, the court may order the alleged father, mother, and child to submit to genetic testing.

Once a person is established as the father or mother of a child, he or she will have all the rights and responsibilities of a parent:

He or she will be able to request custody and visitation (parenting time) orders from the court so that he or she can legally visit with his or her child; He or she also will be responsible for paying child support and will have to pay half of the uninsured health-care costs for the children and half of the child-care costs that result from the custodial parent getting or having a job or going to school.


Once parentage is established, the court can make orders for child support, health insurance, child custody, visitation (parenting time), name change, and reimbursement of pregnancy and birth expenses. Without establishing parentage, the court cannot make orders regarding these issues. So if 1 parent needs child support and the other will not pay voluntarily, the court will not be able to order child support until parentage is established.


Although neither party may be contesting “paternity”, you must file a paternity action to establish custody, visitation and/or child support.


Until a court order is obtained neither party has “legal” physical custody of the minor child or children. This means that if one parent decides to take the child or children and withhold them from the other parent, the parent who has had custody all along would be forced to file a paternity action along with a Request For Order and go to court to obtain a court order to get the minor child or children back into their custody.


If you have an emergency situation, wherein you need to get into court within a few days, you can file an “Ex-Parte” Request For Order hearing which is an emergency hearing. You must have an emergency to file an “Ex-Parte” hearing.

For more information about establishing paternity please contact us today.

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