Blog

Children are generally automatically assumed to be their mother’s biological children when they’re born to them. This isn’t the case with fathers though. Unmarried dads must establish their paternity before they’re allowed to exercise their parental rights to visitation or custody with their child. One way that fathers can do this is by taking a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) paternity test. You may be surprised to find out just how accurate such tests are.

Data compiled by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) shows that DNA tests are a particularly effective tool for determining paternity. They are 100% accurate at excluding a man as the father of a child. DNA tests can be used to confirm that a male is a dad with 99.9% accuracy.

In case you’re wondering how these tests are performed, it involves a clinician taking a small sample of tissues or bodily fluids from both you and your potential child. That genetic material contains both chromosomes and genes and is unique to both of you. Half of your’s and the mother’s genetic material join and form the child. A small sample from both you and a child can show geneticists whether you two share a biological parental connection or not.

Clinicians can sample cells from around the body. The ones that they most often take and test for paternity are buccal (or cheek) cells and blood. The genetic profile of samples like these is consistent no matter what bodily source they come from.

Unmarried fathers generally don’t enjoy any parental rights to their child until they establish their paternity of them. This means that you aren’t legally entitled to visitation or custody of your child. You’re also not entitled to make any decisions about their education, religious upbringing or medical treatment unless you’ve established your paternity either.

If you aren’t listed as the father on your child’s birth certificate and their mother seems reluctant to sign any necessary paperwork to add you to it, then you should initiate the paternity process right away. An attorney here in Dallas can advise you of the steps that you must follow to move forward in establishing paternity and exercising your parental rights here in Texas.

Prenuptial agreements used to be something that the average person never considered. They carried a bit of a stigma, for one thing, and some people felt that just bringing it up was offensive. They were also mostly used by the wealthy, as they had more at stake.

These days, though, more and more couples are getting prenuptial agreements, even when they’re not wealthy. It is clear that the younger generations have embraced them in a new way.

One reason for this could be the fact that divorce rates soared after the development of no-fault divorce cases. That mass increase has leveled off, but it means that a lot of today’s young couples grew up in a world where divorce was far more common. It’s easier for them to accept than it was for previous generations.

Another reason is that people often delay getting married into their late 20s or even their 30s. You don’t see nearly as many couples just getting married right out of high school. They put it off and focus on careers and dating relationships. This means that they may have far more assets when they actually do get married than couples had in the past, so the use of a prenup just seems to make a bit more sense to them.

It’s still true that most couples do not use prenups, but it’s also clear that they’re beginning to see how useful of a tool these can be. If you want to use one, it’s important to know exactly how to get it set up properly before the wedding.

Today, most people get married because of how they feel. They fall in love with one another, decide they can’t spend life apart and choose to get married. This has been dubbed the “marriage of feeling.”

It has certainly not always been this way. As much as we romanticize this idea now, the “marriage of reason” has been more common over human history. People did not get married because they were in love but because of the advantages of the marriage.

This is easiest to see with royalty, as they often married as a way to secure peace between two countries. The people getting married may never even have met, but the marriage wasn’t about them. It was about creating allies.

Even with commoners, though, marriage often happened for practical reasons. Two people may have land next to each other and decide to marry in order to join their properties. Parents may look for partners for their children based on what religion they followed. Historically, women often wanted to marry men because they needed them for financial support, while men want to get married because of the need for offspring.

While this still happens today, things have changed. The marriage of feeling is far more common, and many people feel like it sounds very unfair and wrong to get married for any other reason.

The issue with the marriage of feeling, though, is that it is only bound by those feelings. With no practical reason to be married, couples who fall out of love may want to end the union. When they get divorced, it’s important to know about the legal options they have.