Friday, March 23, 2007

Can a man disestablish paternity in Indiana?

Disestablishing paternity means going to court to get an order saying that the man is no longer the father. This cannot be done in Indiana. See In re the Paternity of E.M.L.G, R.L.J., J.A.J., and N.A.H..

Indiana Law Blog has a post here on the problem of fathers paying support on children and learning that they are not truly the fathers. Indiana handled this problem in the divorce area years ago but the statutes are different, so a different outcome.

The Family Law Prof has posts on cases in Arkansas and Colorado.

In my opinion, we may be seeing a major problem with child support enforcement throughout the country. In Indiana, paternity affidavits are handed out to the putative fathers by hospital staff with no explanation of their legal rights and with a full measure of social pressure to sign the affidavits. (See my post today on the problems specifically with those affidavits). My recollection is that these affidavits were mandated by the federal government, and so this could be a national problem. This appears confirmed by the stories linked to above.

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