The Mother’s Husband is the Child’s Father by Default

If the mother is married at the time of the child’s birth, her husband becomes the legal father by default. Why is this the case in an age when DNA paternity testing is so accurate and so inexpensive? Part of the reason goes back to the days before DNA testing was available. Before the 1990s, alleging that the father of a married woman’s child was someone other than her husband required nothing short of character assassination, and it was almost impossible to prove.  Even now that matters of biological paternity are so easy to determine through DNA testing, Florida courts still prefer to keep families intact. If a child has been raised by two parents since birth, the courts favor arrangements where those two adults remain the primary caregivers until the child reaches adulthood. (This is the logic behind the trend toward timesharing in Florida’s parenting plans.)

The Flynn v. McCraney Case, in Which a Biological Father Sued for Paternity and Lost

The Flynn v. McCraney and McCraney case involves a man (Flynn) who fathered a child by a woman (Mrs. McCraney) who was married to another man (Mr. McCraney). When the child was born, the courts named Mr. McCraney as the legal father. Flynn sued for paternity, but the court ruled that, if a child is born to an intact marriage, even proof of another man’s biological paternity cannot take away the mother’s husband’s legal paternity. This ruling followed the precedent of the Slowinski v. Sweeney case from several years earlier, which had the same outcome. In that case, the mother had died, and thus her husband was the only parent who had had a relationship with the child throughout the child’s entire life.

Alan Burton Defends the Legal Rights of Parents and Children

Florida family courts are committed to basing their decisions on the best interests of the child. If you think that you and your child have a legal right to a better arrangement, contact Alan Burton in Boca Raton, Florida.

What Rights Do Fathers Have?

You might think that going through the process to establish paternity is unnecessary red tape, especially if you communicate well enough with your child’s mother that there have never been any major disagreements about the child. You might have an unwritten agreement where you take care of the child at certain times and provide some financial support to the child. Without legally establishing paternity, though, anything can change. What if a new partner enters the picture? What if one of you decides to move out of state?

A child’s legal father has certain rights and obligations regarding his children.

• Physical custody: The court can enforce the father’s right to spend a certain number of days per year with the children. (This is called “timesharing” in the Florida parenting plan.)
• Legal custody: The father has the right to act on the children’s behalf and make major decisions regarding them. This is especially important regarding schools; legal custody is the right to decide everything from which school the children attend to which extracurricular activities they can do.
• Child support: You might not think of paying child support as a “right,” but Florida law also considers the father’s needs and ability to pay in determining how much child support her should pay. If the children spend more time with you and your income is lower than your ex’s, the court might require her to pay child support.

How to Get the Court to Recognize You as the Child’s Father

The easiest way for an unmarried father to become recognized as the legal father is to file a Voluntary Acknowledgement of Paternity. Once you and the child’s mother file this signed statement with the court, it will become legally binding 60 days later. The court may or may not ask you to take a DNA test to prove that you are the biological father of the child.

Burton Law Is Here to Help Fathers

When you have established legal paternity, the court cannot take your children away from you, except in very extreme circumstances. Contact Alan Burton in Palm Beach County in order to have the court legally acknowledge you as the father of your children.