What is a paternity test?
Determining the biological father of a child can have a major impact on child custody, divorce and insurance claim cases. It can also provide answers for those who have been adopted or spent time in the child welfare system. The means of determining a child’s biological father, or possibly of excluding other candidates, is called a paternity test. Before the advent of DNA testing, a paternity test usually excluded candidates rather than identifying them. Blood samples were drawn from the child and suspected fathers. Through simple ABO crosstyping, a potential father could be eliminated quickly. If the child’s blood contained a B component and the potential father was strictly A, the paternity test would exclude him as a parent. This did not mean, however, that another candidate with blood type B was necessarily the father. A better paternity test was needed to include specific markers for a child’s biological parent. With advances in DNA testing came a much more accurate paternity test
Paternity tests are used to determine the identity of a child’s biological father and are typically 99.99% reliable. Due to the high degree of reliability, test results serve as a legally admissible determination that the man tested is or is not the child’s father, Why Have a Paternity Test? There are several reasons to seek a paternity test. The results can provide simple peace of mind, or supply the foundation for seeking parental rights and responsibilities, child support, or emotional support through shared parenting. Recent technological advances have made paternity testing much more accessible, and as a result, many men are being requested to submit to paternity testing in connection to legal action involving children. If administered by a respected facility using proven methods, the results of the test are difficult to undermine and are typically admissible in Court. How are Results Used? Often referred to DNA testing because it is an examination of the DNA for common patterns b
Before we were able to analyze DNA, blood tests were used to assess paternity. However, blood testing is limited, in that it can only rule out a possible father, not prove paternal identity. Today, genetic technology is used, and DNA paternity testing makes it possible to, with a very high degree of certainty, determine the identity of a child’s biological father.
