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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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Why a father should be forced to pay child support without a paternity test

Are you asking about situations where the man is married to the mother? Or other situations?

I'm not an expert on this subject, but as far as I know:

(1) If the man is not married to the mother and does not acknowledge the child, then if she wants child support from him over his objection, she has to pursue a proceeding to establish paternity. In that proceeding, he is generally entitled to a paternity test. Probably there are some injustices in this process, for example if the man is tricked into acknowledging paternity, that could be a problem. Or if he is unaware of the paternity proceeding, having not been properly served. But for the most part, a cautious man can avoid being tagged with child support for another man's children, provided he is not married to the mother.

(2) If the man is married to the mother, it's a much bigger problem for him. In a lot of jurisdictions, he's completely screwed. In others, he has a limited amount of time to dispute paternity. I am pretty sure this rule has its roots in common law traditions from the distant past, in which there was no DNA testing available. (Of course, back then arguably a man was in a better position to prevent contact between his wife and other men.) I would guess it carries on today out of a combination of cultural inertia and gynocentrism. To be sure, it's very unfair to men, but there are still workarounds. For example, a man can secretly test his children and if he is not the father, make an excuse to move the family to a jurisdiction where this would be a basis to disclaim paternity.

Why, if the biological father is different, they shouldn’t be the one required to pay the child support instead

Again, I think it's mainly a matter of cultural inertia. Although it would be interesting to see what would happen if a married woman ended up getting pregnant with the child of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.

The prohibition on challenging paternity only applies when the parties are married. Changing this wouldn't even make sense because you don't make support payments or deal with visitation rights when living in the same household. If you file for divorce then the marriage ends and you very much can challenge paternity. While you won't have to make child support payments, you also won't get any visitation rights.

The prohibition on challenging paternity only applies when the parties are married. Changing this wouldn't even make sense because you don't make support payments or deal with visitation rights when living in the same household. If you file for divorce then the marriage ends and you very much can challenge paternity. While you won't have to make child support payments, you also won't get any visitation rights.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Do you disagree with anything I have said?

I'm not sure what the point would be of legally disestablishing paternity would be if you're married. If you want to do it for your own edification then buy a test off of Amazon; there's no role for the court to play here.

You can't think of why a married man would want to legally establish he'd been cheated on and duped?

You can't think of why a married man would want to legally establish he'd been cheated on and duped?

I suspect what's going on here is that @Rov_Scam is attacking some kind of straw man. Why would a married man wish to establish non-paternity? Obviously, the answer is that -- if the law allows it -- he would like to get a divorce and get out of paying child support. If he discovered he was not the father, either through an informal DNA test or some other way, then in theory he could file for divorce and, as part of that proceeding, ask for the Court to find that he's not the father and therefore he's not on the hook for child support. As part of that proceeding, he would presumably request a formal DNA test. (Of course this is only if a non-paternity proceeding is permitted in the relevant jurisdiction.)

Here's what I said before:

If the man is married to the mother, it's a much bigger problem for him. In a lot of jurisdictions, he's completely screwed. In others, he has a limited amount of time to dispute paternity.

Now, obviously it kind of goes without saying that if a husband is formally disputing paternity, he's going to be doing it in connection with a divorce proceeding. Admittedly, I did not spell that out. Which -- I suspect -- was the opening @Rov_Scam needed to come in and pretend that I was talking about a non-paternity proceeding brought without any kind of divorce. Which I agree would be silly.

Which is why I strongly suspect that @Rov_Scam is just going after a strawman for whatever reason. But who knows? In another post I asked him to QUOTE me if I said anything he disputes.

I'm not trying to establish a straw man, I just don't understand why you continued to argue after I said you could disestablish paternity as part of a divorce proceeding.

If the man is married to the mother, it's a much bigger problem for him. In a lot of jurisdictions, he's completely screwed. In others, he has a limited amount of time to dispute paternity.

I arbitrarily looked at the laws in the number of states and I couldn't find any that prohibited this.

If I'm reading correctly, California allows cohabiting spouses two years after the date of birth to dispute paternity. I think Indiana, too? I'm not sure of anywhere with a statutory block, but paternity-by-estoppel states can supposedly get really messy even with clear genetic evidence.

... uh, hilariously, Pennsylvania does actually have case law blocking genetic testing for paternity in some cases and seems to have a paternity-by-estoppel statute.

As a preliminary matter, you're not going to find any estoppel statutes (there may be a few but that would be rare). Estoppel is an equitable doctrine that prevents someone who has engaged in a course of conduct that creates a reliance interest from reneging to the detriment of another. I don't have time to go into too much detail but see this case. It, along with the first one you cited, gives a good overview of the contemporary views of the presumption of paternity and paternity by estoppel. As to the former, the court concludes that:

This Court’s decisions, however, have held steadfast that there is a single circumstance under which the presumption of paternity continues to apply, and, indeed, is irrebuttable –where there is an intact marriage to preserve.

To quote the relevant part of the opinion you cited:

In order to determine the paternity of a child born in wedlock, courts first must determine whether the marriage is intact at the time of the paternity challenge. If so, then the presumption of paternity applies, and dictates that, regardless of biology, the mother’s spouse will be the child’s parent. However, the presumption may be rebutted if the putative father produces clear and convincing evidence that: (1) there is a reasonable possibility that DNA testing would reveal him to be the child’s biological father; and (2) determining parentage based upon DNA testing serves the best interests of the child, with due consideration for the interests of the potential father as well as the interests of the wife and husband. If the court finds no threshold possibility of paternity, or determines that adjudicating paternity by DNA testing would disserve the relevant interests, then the presumption governs. But if the court finds a threshold possibility of paternity, and determines that the balance of interests lies in assigning paternity based upon the biological truth, the presumption must yield, and the court should order appropriate genetic testing to determine paternity of the child.

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