Walter Hinteler wrote: 15 is the minimum here when ordered by courts - nearly all labs do more .... for about $220.
$220?? That's a mere pitance compared to 18-24 years of child support! :wink:
There are cheaper ones, but I only looked at those accepted by our local family court. (This one was with 30 markers).
And the price depends on exchange rate - a bit lower now, I think :wink:
Walter Hinteler wrote:ebrown_p wrote:FreeDuck wrote:I think that if two people are married and agree to have children, then where is the fraud if the husband is not the biological father? He wanted to be with his wife and they both wanted kids, right?
If your husband gets another woman pregnant, and then brings this child into your house to raise as your own... would you feel the same way?
That would be totally different situation - at least here - since the child's mother had to agree to an adoption.
I don't think it is different at all.
The biological father of a baby born to a married woman (illegitamately) has the same right to agree to an adoption. I am pretty sure that this is a legal right in both of our countries.
The only difference is that women have the ability to deceive their husband (and the real father) until it is too late. In my opinion that stinks.
fishin wrote:sozobe wrote:I read up a bit more about DNA testing and one stat was 28% inaccuracy -- if that was done universally, that would create a whole lot of chaos. Several places indicated that it's not 100%. It seems like it would have to be a lot more foolproof for that method to be viable, large-scale, even putting aside the constitutional issues. (They do blood testing at birth already, along with hearing screening, so not sure about the privacy angle, I see what you mean though.)
I think there are a few ways of dealing with teh innaccuracies in DNA testing. The first is to realize that With DNA testing it is easier to prove a negative than a positive. i.e. it may not be possible to exclude someone as a father but it is fairly easy to detect if they shouldn't be included in the pool of posisbles.
Most labs, from my understanding, also check 8 to 10 markers. That could be increased to 15 or 20 or 40. The more makers required for a match the more accuarte the test becomes.
Some of the other issues mentioned in the article you linked earlier could be controlled for too. Tests could be sent to multiple labs and results could be compared for example. If 2 labs come back with positives and one with a negative then something is wrong and tests need to be re-done.
There is no reason tests can't be done to a 99.99% accuracy level right now. We have had reports in recent years that up to as many as 30% of the population wasn't fathered by the person they thought of as their biological parent. Testing would shrink that number quickly.
I found reference to that when I was looking around, not actually the case:
Quote:The AABB (American Association of Blood Banks [1]) annually publishes consolidated statistics from many accredited paternity testing services. These may reveal, for example, that 28% of paternity tests were "negative", and the man tested is not the biological father of the child. (28% is a typical figure).
This does not mean that 28% of men in the population are not the biological fathers of the children they believe are theirs. It does not even mean this in sub-populations "at risk", such as broken families. And it certainly does not mean that there is a 28% rate of paternity fraud [2] in any given population or sub-population! In fact, it means very little other than what it says - these are simply the statistics for a given set of paternity tests, saying little about the rate of misattributed paternity [3] for the sub-population who have been tested.
source
Quote:We should also remember that the guys that are getting hit with child support for kids that aren't their's are all using DNA evidence right now. The courts are accepting their evidence and recognizing that they aren't the biological father. They just decide that the facts aren't relevant and the "needs of the child" outweigh the facts.
Sure, but I think that an acceptable error rate in already-disputed cases, which has to be a very small percentage of total childbirths, can become a huge problem when it's on a universal level. A quick search yielded the stat that 4 million babies are born in the U.S. every year. A 2% error rate (for example) would yield 80,000 families thrown into uproar just because of error. (The woman insisting there was no way, the man suspicious...)
I get what you're saying about safeguards etc., but given my experience with universal infant hearing screening I think that if it takes that much for it to be done right it wouldn't be done at all.
Osso's info is interesting though, technology may get there.
Sozobe, how accurate does a paternity test have to be before you will accept them as a normal procedure?
My understanding is that right now you can get to less than 1 error in 10,000 if you use the most advanced (i.e. expensive) tests available.
This test is not a one time thing... the obvious procedure is to give everyone a quick and cheap test. If the test comes back negative, then you can check again with the very accurate tests. You could even do this before letting the "parents" know.
It bothers me that men are tricked so routinely in such a personal and important area.
e_brown, have you been reading my comments throughout? I've said that I like fishin's idea as a concept. I'm just wondering if it's practical.
I also don't know how routine it is. I believe it happens, but I don't think it's anywhere near 30%, as fishin' said.
What I would want is something that's fair to EVERYONE. Men, women, kids. Is that possible? I dunno.
Quote:This test is not a one time thing... the obvious procedure is to give everyone a quick and cheap test. If the test comes back negative, then you can check again with the very accurate tests. You could even do this before letting the "parents" know.
This is exactly the concept behind universal infant hearing screening -- and it's not going well, at all. Hospitals don't want to do it. The initial test has false positives and false negatives. People don't go through with requested follow-up screenings. (Maybe they would be more willing with this, but I can't imagine why parents wouldn't want to know if their kids are deaf as early as possible, nor can I imagine a parent walking away from a child who was he or she raised for six years, so I'm not assuming anything.)
And here's more about inaccuracy:
Quote:Who's Your Daddy?
Don't count on DNA testing to tell you.
By Susan Kruglinski
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 04 | April 2006 | Medicine
When celebrity hairstylist Andre Chreky was hit with a paternity suit by a woman he had not been involved with for years, he was certain he couldn't lose. Paternity tests are DNA tests, he thought, and DNA tests never lie. So he unhesitatingly submitted a swab of cells. To his shock, he was positively identified as the father, with a 99.99 percent certainty.
But last April, after a two-year legal battle that cost Chreky $800,000, the Fairfax, Virginia, circuit court found that human error in the testing was probable and that the DNA results were incorrect.
"It hurt my family; my business," Chreky says. "My life will never be the same."
DNA testing is thought of as definitive. If there is a match between two samples, then identification is certain. Some DNA experts place the probability of an error at one in a billion. But recent cases in which paternity tests were proven to be inaccurate suggest the odds may be much less certain.
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-06/features/paternity-testing-dna/
I quoted the beginning of that article, the end is more pertinent:
Quote:"Every particular DNA variation that you can think of is in the population and at a reasonable frequency," says Reich. "So in the case of paternity testing, you can never be sure that a man is excluded unless you look at every genetic element. But you can't."
Thompson, who says DNA testing is very reliable, warns that "even a low rate of error can significantly undermine confidence in the results if you are doing hundreds of thousands of these tests."
"What particularly disturbs me," Judge David T. Stitt stated in the summary of the Chreky case, "is that most of the people coming through our system, particularly criminal defendants, do not have the resources to mount the kind of challenge to the DNA test results as was done in this case. . . . DNA test results are typically accepted at face value by the court in criminal and civil cases."
ebrown_p wrote:FreeDuck wrote:I think that if two people are married and agree to have children, then where is the fraud if the husband is not the biological father? He wanted to be with his wife and they both wanted kids, right?
If your husband gets another woman pregnant, and then brings this child into your house to raise as your own... would you feel the same way?
I was specifically adressing the example of the man who found out after 6 years that his child was not biologically his and in defense of the idea of a time limit (within the first two years) to challenge paternity. In your example, I would of course know right away, and no, I wouldn't feel the same way. Neither would a man who was informed pre-birth that the child was not his. That's not what we're talking about here. We are presumably talking about the case where a man agrees to be the father (one way or the other) and then finds out later that he is not the biological father. I'm saying that the psychological aspect of parenthood is enough to compensate for the missing genetic aspect.
The point is, if you have suspicions, find out early enough that you don't put yourself and your kids through hell by ripping apart the attachment at a future date. In the case of unmarried parents, I would think it would be simple and probably routine to find out early as the father would more than likely find it in his interest to demand a test.
There was a discussion earlier about the name on the birth certificate. I don't know if all states are the same, but in Virginia the father cannot put his name on the birth certificate without both parents swearing that he is the father. I'm sure this is for reasons that boomer has indicated -- in order to save the state having to support the child.
As for DNA tests, there have been rare cases where mother's were found not to be the biological maternal parent of their children, even though they had given birth to them. These women were found to be chimeras. I imagine there are some male chimeras too. Again, these are rare cases so I'm not sure how much they weigh against the need to be certain of genetic parentage.
FreeDuck wrote:
There was a discussion earlier about the name on the birth certificate. I don't know if all states are the same, but in Virginia the father cannot put his name on the birth certificate without both parents swearing that he is the father. I'm sure this is for reasons that boomer has indicated -- in order to save the state having to support the child.
I informed me earlier about how that works here (forgot to re-post it after some errors):
- if the child's parents are married, both are registered (obviously, the law thinks that if the father disputes being the father he would articulate that),
- otherwise, the father is registered at birth (if he accepts being it), or can be added within ten days (the registration is "paused" for that period),
- if the father is not known or if the mother doesn't want to name hm (the latter is usually the fact), he's not registered at all.
The child doesn't get support if the mother doesn't help authorities (here: Department of Youth and Family Services) to get the father's name.
That sounds about right. I neglected to indicate that the parents only have to swear to the father's parentage if the parents are not married.
Re: Mamma's baby, Poppa's maybe not: Paternity fraud
As a matter of principle, I believe that two points should be strictly distinguished:
1) The legal obligation of parent to support the children they beget. This obligation comes from the fact that sex has consequences, and you can't bring children into the world and then not care for them. Caring for children is the responsibility of the biological parents. Consequently, this responsibility should end whenever it turns out that one isn't a biological parent.
2) The legal right of people to have access to their children. This right comes from the fact that parents are usually caregivers who invest a lot of effort in your relation with the child. The child cares, in turn, cares a lot about them. It is cruel for a court to split up this caregiver/child relationship against their will. In boomerang's hypothetical examples, the caregiver is the "social father" who is not a biological father. He is shut out by the biological father, or by the mother. But I don't really see how the case ought to be different when a child's caregiver is, for example, its grandmother. Suppose she cares for the child during the first 10 years, after which the mother decides to shut the grandmother out. Shouldn't the shut-out grandmother have the same visiting rights etc. as the shut-out father? I think she should.
With these points in mind, I think the duties of parents arise from biological parenthood, while the rights of parents arise from their caregiving. Hence I think fathers should always have a right to test their fatherhood, no matter when, regardless of the child's best interest. But those who care for a child for years, and who have developed a strong emotional bond with it, should always have the rights that divorced parents have. I expect to have the "always"s eroded as I look at more cases, but this would be my starting point.
A woman has made a cuckold of her husband, has made him out to be a fool, and has tried to pass off an illegitimante child as his. You don't see the fraud in that? Not only has the woman pawned off a child as his, she also betrayed him with her infidelity with another person.
I don't see how the fraud in this could possibly be clearer.
Of course a man who has unwittingly acted as true father to someone will feel an emotional attachment, and it would be understandable if he wished to continue to support this child he was led to believe was his.
However, I feel responsibility should also be taken by the mother to lift the burden of her ex-husband by either making the birth father responsible for his child, and being accountable for obtaining support on her own for her children. In addition, if the non-biological father makes to choice to cut down or eliminate support, this should in no way effect his visitation with these children, as for years he had been duped into being responsible for them, he needs to enjoy the privilege of seeing them.
I had taped some episodes of "Dexter", an HBO series, and watch one last night. In it, the abusive, alcoholic/drug dependant father/ex-husband of the main characters girl friend end up back in prision. The small children were upset yet again with their mother that this bum of a father could not visit any longer. The character Dexter pointed out to his GF that she was continuing to cover up/make excuses for this abusive husband, for "the sake of the children" when one of the consequences was that she was being deprived of their love, since they perceived HER as the problem. In the end, she brought the children with her to the jail, and first spoke to her ex alone, telling him that if he wished to maintain his visitation rights in the future, he needed to personally tell his children WHY he was again in jail, that it was HIS fault, not the mothers that his children would not be able to visit him.
In the same way, if the non-bio father wishes to cut out/cut back on the monetary support, the mother of these children need to educate them that is through no fault of his that the support is stopping, but through the fact that in the past SHE is the one totally responsible for this situation. She can't have her cake and eat it too. She loves her children, and she needs to either find the birth father and ask him to ante up, or work out some loan agreement with the non-bio dad, or a combination.
It isn't fair to equate the non-bio dads love with money. That's short changing him emotionally.
