Paternity
In contemporary law the legal determination of paternity generally rests on the results of blood and genetic testing. However, there are times when it can be proved that it was impossible for a husband to be the father of his wife's child because the husband was absent during the period when conception occurred.
The evolving state of the martial presumption of paternity can be seen in the revised Uniform Parentage Act (UPA), published in 2000. While the new UPA retains all of the original presumptions related to marriage, it eliminates the clear and convincing evidence standard for rebutting an assumption of paternity. Instead it states that the presumption may be rebutted "only by admissible results of genetic testing excluding that man as the father of the child or identifying another man as the father of the child." The most recent UPA states: "The existence of modern genetic testing obviates this old approach to the problem of conflicting presumptions when a court is to determine paternity."
In determining a husband's paternity, the court may deny a request for genetic testing if it finds by clear and convincing evidence that the conduct of the mother or the presumed father means it would be unfair to allow that party to deny parentage and it would be wrong to end the father-child relationship. According to the new UPA, the alleged biological father of a child born to a married mother now has standing to bring an action to determine the existence or non-existence of the parent-child relationship. The new UPA also adopts a time limit to rebut the marital presumption to two years following the birth of the child if the presumed father lived in the same household as the child or treated the child as his own.
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Source: TheFreeDictionary.com
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