A suit to establish a parent-child relationship between a child and a presumed or biological father can be filed in Texas and are more commonly known as paternity suits or now, parentage suits.
The process typically includes the child's mother or presumed father filing a suit to have a Texas family law court legally establish the parent-child relationship between the father and the child. A parentage suite is often brought voluntarily by the presumed father in order to legally establish his rights and relationship with the child.
The purpose in filing a suit is not only to establish this relationship from a legal standpoint but also for the purpose of establishing custody, residence establishment, visitation and of course, child support obligations in regard to the child. Issues relating to child support implementation has been previously discussed in our Child Support Modification section, but it is important to note that a non-custodial parent not only has an obligation to pay child support but also to provide for the costs of health insurance premiums for the child as well as 50% of the uninsured medical costs of the child.
When parentage is contested, a suit is filed like any other contested lawsuit in the state of Texas and the presumed father is entitled to personal service. When parentage is denied or questioned by the presumed father, DNA testing is ordered by the court to ascertain with greater than 99% accuracy whether or not the child is the child of the alleged or presumed father.
In parentage suits, the court will often require each parent to initially pay their own fees and for an equitable portion of the paternity testing. However, often times, if the child is found to be the child of the alleged father, the court may order reimbursement of the mother's portion of the testing and additionally, may also award reimbursement of lawyers fees for the mother having to file the suit.
A final word of caution is warranted. For the last few years, Texas law has changed and now by waiting to pursue a parentage suit, you may be allowing time to pass in which child support would otherwise have been ordered but now will not be due to the failure of the mother to pursue the claim. Thus, time is of the essence.
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