Payback Time for Cheats

A paternity test is routinely used to find out whether a father should be paying child maintenance or not. However, it can also show that fathers have been paying for bringing up children that are not actually biologically theirs.

Paternity Test – Who’s the Daddy?

Taking a paternity test isn’t always about getting child maintenance from the father to pay for his child. In some cases a paternity DNA test can show that it’s the mother of the child who has been lying and cheating. One ground-breaking case was that of a Frenchman who discovered through a test that he’d been raising a child he had assumed was his.

Paternity Test in Private Clinic

The mother of the child took the paternity test through a private clinic in London after years of suspicion that her daughter may in fact be the offspring of her lover. The test confirmed her suspicions that her child was her lover’s. For 13 years, her ex-husband brought up the child as his own. But when the mother presented him with the results, she changed her daughter’s surname and removed her from his home.

Groundbreaking Ruling

But bringing up a child is a costly business, and when the matter went to court the Frenchman was awarded over £15,000 compensation after the DNA paternity test revealed he was not the father of the 13-year-old. His ex-wife and her lover were told to pay back the man the money he had spent on bringing up their child.

Damaging Impact

Women who fail to tell their husbands that they had an affair at the time of conception are in effect, deceiving the men. Failing to air suspicions about the paternity of a child can have long-term damaging effects on both the child, biological father and the man who believed he was the father.

Fathers’ Rights

Recent years have seen a shift towards parental rights on the father’s side as paternity care is increasingly seen as valid as maternal care. Although it can be impossible to work out how much the man paid on bringing up who he thought was his daughter, the emotional cost is far reaching. A test in such a bitter family court case can have huge implications. The girl had been living with the man she assumed was her father, when the paternity test results turned her life upside down.