A Court Ordered Paternity Test

Court ordered paternity tests are often needed especially in cases where the father refuses to acknowledge that he is the biological father of a child and refuses to provide child support.

Not taking responsibility for a child means having to go to court and get a judge to issue a court order for the paternity test. The father will have to take the paternity test as refusal to submit to the test will carry other serious legal implications- if the alleged father is shown to be the biological father of the child then he will have to provide the child support as decreed by the court.

Normally, going about getting a court ordered or legal DNA paternity test, means paying for a lawyer to represent your case and petition to the judge for the DNA paternity test (test de paternitate). If you do not have the money for this, there are organizations which can help or sometimes, depending on the country, the court may be able to provide you with a lawyer and cover the fees. However, you will need to have a sound case as a mother to take a given man to court and strongly support your claim as to this man being the biological father of your child.

Once the court has issued the order:

The mother, alleged father and child will need to submit DNA samples. In some rare instances, the court might require blood samples to be taken, but most commonly it is a saliva DNA sample taken using a mouth swab. The mother will be encouraged for inclusion in the legal paternity testing to maximize the accuracy of the paternity test results.

The Court Ordered Paternity Test

In some cases, you can just do a legal paternity test which is not necessarily court ordered. Whichever the case a paternity test needed for legal reasons has to be done under strict supervision. This is to make sure that the DNA samples submitted are those of the people who should really be taking part in the test. The procedure is known as a chain of custody and this makes your paternity test court admissible.

A court ordered paternity test will allow you to get child maintenance and conclusively show that the alleged father is truly the biological dad of the child/children.

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A Western Australian man is required by a court to take a paternity DNA test to disprove him as the father of a child. Given the fact that he had a vasectomy in 1994 and met the mother of the boy in 2000, the father knows the child cannot be his. Read the story.