Recently in Paternity Category

How does an asbestos lawsuit lead to paternity issues? It is not as far-fetched as you might think, reports the Southeast Texas Record.

Turns out that in 1998, after the death of her husband Claude Franklin, his widow, Mary Ann Franklin, joined in a class-action lawsuit against a number of oil and chemical companies.

The lawsuit alleged that companies such as Mobil Oil and DuPont exposed their workers to asbestos and that Claude Franklin died as a result of cancer in 1999, which was believed to be directly due to the asbestos.

A Center for Disease Control (CDC) study finds that the teen sex rate is down because teens are having less sex, reports the Houston Chronicle.

The report about the teen sex rate found that 43 percent of teen girls and 42 percent of boys have had sex at least once by the age of 19. Those numbers are down from 51.1 percent of girls and 60.4 percent of boys in 2002.

Not surprisingly, the teen birth rate is the lowest in recorded history. The teen birth rate is currently at 39 per 1,000.

An infant delivered by emergency surgery after her mother, Diann Ford, was killed in a hit-and-run, is the subject of a custody battle, reports the Houston Chronicle.

Diann Ford was a pregnant single mom when she was struck by a car walking near her work. She didn’t survive, but her child — who doesn’t have a name yet — did. And now that child is likely to be caught up in a custody battle.

A 31-year-old Texan, Himmer Amilcar Beltran-Rodriguez, is accused of impregnating a teen baby-sitter, reports the Houston Chronicle.

The man from Houston has been charged with sexual assault of a child because he presumably impregnated a 15-year-old that was hired by his wife as a babysitter for their children. The girl came forward when she was 18-years-old, though the alleged incident occurred years earlier, in spring of 2008. The girl had been working for the Beltran-Rodriguez family at an apartment complex in the 2200 block of Galveston Road.

With the pop culture scene cluttered with stories about unplanned pregnancies -- from the film Knocked Up to the TV show Teen Mom -- it is always worthwhile looking at the issue of pregnancy from a legal perspective.

One of the important elements of any pregnancy is the establishment of the father. Legally establishing the identity of the father is what lawyers refer to as "paternity."

Below are five reasons why it is worthwhile to get paternity legally recognized whenever there is a pregnancy:

Fathers now have the right to file a petition in court and submit to DNA testing if they have reason to believe that they are not the father of a child that they once claimed was theirs, reports The Beaumont Enterprise. Thanks to Senate Bill 785, men can now challenge paternity and can have their child support obligations terminated if a judge finds that a person has been wrongfully declared the father.

SB 785 passed in the Texas Legislature in May with a unanimous vote in both the House and the Senate. The law went into effect immediately and is now has the potential to help out dads around the state who have been victims of paternity fraud.

Fraternal twins don’t necessarily have to have the same dad. This is an extremely rare occurrence, but a case that was featured on an episode of “Maury” reminded viewers that a situation of twins having different dads is possible.

AOL News reported that a mother had the surprise of her life when she got the results of a paternity test, which revealed that her two twin boys were conceived by two different fathers. Apparently, the paternity test showed that a father’s DNA matched up with one twin and not the other.

The case of the Arlington woman who was stabbed to death before her apartment was set on fire this week is shocking many people in the Tarrant County community. Fox News reports that the victim Mechelle Gandy and her 16-month old son were found dead in the 2200 block of President's Corner Drive late Sunday night. The baby boy also died in the home, most likely due to the fire that was apparently deliberately set after the stabbing.

Just a couple weeks prior to Gandy's death, the mother reportedly filed paperwork in court to force the man she believed was her baby's father to take a paternity test. Paternity testing would have legally established who the biological father was, which could have eventually secured financial support as well as custody and visitation rights.

A case in Beaumont shows just how important paternity testing can be. According to KFDM.com, Michael Thomas divorced his wife in 2006 and was ordered to pay $400 a month in child support as a non-custodial parent. However, months after the divorce decree, Thomas says that he found out that the child he was paying money for wasn't his.

The child in this case is now eight years old, but Thomas claims that a DNA test shows that there is a zero percent chance that he is actually the father of the child. Meanwhile, the Texas Attorney General's Office is still ordering Thomas to pay support to the child, which means that Thomas will have to appeal to the court to get the child support order changed.

High school students across the state of Texas are learning about the financial aspects of relationships, marriage, and children. Through programs like Parenting and Paternity Awareness (PAPA) and No Kidding, teenagers will learn about their legal obligations as parents and the costs associated with child support, parenting, and paternity.

USA Today reports that child support and paternity are at the basis of the PAPA program, where PAPA's 14-hour curriculum teaches teenagers about importance of father involvement and the value of paternity establishment. Students can also learn about the emotional and financial challenges of raising a child.