What Does A Paternity Test Prove?

While the identity of a child’s father is often not a matter in serious dispute, sometimes even acknowledged fathers will take a paternity test if they need to confirm their relationship to their child. But how does a paternity test work and what does it prove?

Protect Yourself By Understanding Your Options and Knowing Your Rights.

Schedule A Consultation

Call For A Consultation 704-333-9900

A proper paternity test will take a sample of DNA – usually through a simple and painless swab on the inside of a person’s cheek – from the child, the mother, and the putative father. A lab will then analyze all three sets of DNA to determine whether or not the child is related to the other two people. The results of the analysis are presented in a report that will provide a statistical probability that the putative father is related to the child, usually by indicating how likely it is that some other random man is the child’s father. This is often reported as the size of the population that would have to exist for another man to be the father; for example, “one man in thirty trillion (1:30,000,000,000,000) would exhibit this DNA profile.” Because the current population of all humans on Earth is less than ten billion (10,000,000,000), it is considered statistically impossible for anyone else to be the child’s father.