Establishing paternity is often the first step in many family law cases with children involved. Therefore, parents or the court may request DNA testing in order to determine paternity. A man may also voluntarily take a paternity test to establish parental rights over a child. Laws pertaining to paternity testing in Minnesota were discussed in detail in our previous post. This post will discuss what happens in the event of a positive paternity test result.
Paternity tests are conducted by laboratories accredited by the American Association of Blood Banks. These laboratories provide a result which uses a percentage of presumption of likelihood that a man is the biological father of a child. If a test result suggests that a man is 92 percent or more likely to be the biological father, those results passed on to the court will result in the court identifying this man as the likely father of the child and ordering the payment of child support. However, 92 percent is not a sufficient result to establish definitive biological fatherhood of a child.
In the event that a paternity test result shows that a father is 99 percent or more likely to be father of the child, the court will with no doubt consider that man the biological father. If the man, or any other party, wants to refute the paternity identification, that party must submit adequate evidence to disprove the paternity test. Determining the biological father of a child does not necessarily affect the legal father’s rights. However, courts do not allow the DNA donor who assists a parent who is a recipient of child support to claim to be the biological or legal father of the child.
Source: MN.gov, “2014 Minnesota Statutes – 257.62 Blood and Genetic Tests,” Accessed on April 2, 2015
