When considering paternity, there is sometimes confusion over who may be a child’s father. It’s very important to sort this out as paternity pertains to child custody rights, child support obligations and much more. For instance, if you’re really not the father, you do not want to get trapped paying child support for years after you and the child’s mother end your relationship.
So, say you get a paternity test and it says you are not the child’s father. Is that the end of it? How accurate is that test?
If you used DNA testing and it determined that you are not the child’s father, the accuracy is reported to be 100% by the prestigious Cleveland Clinic when it comes to exclusions. It’s the most accurate type of test that is on the market right now and those results are ones that you can trust. You’re not going to find out later that it was wrong and now you owe a lot of back pay for missed child support or anything of that nature.
If the test says that you are the father, the accuracy is slightly lower, but it’s still 99.9%. In regards to this, the Cleveland Clinic says that the test can show that the person in question is “highly likely to be the father.” So, overall, these tests are taken very seriously and generally trusted to be correct, even when there is technically a small chance of error. They are far better than tests of the past and DNA has been a revolutionary development in that regard.
For all paternity questions, child custody issues and the like, you must know your legal options.