Juan C. Antúnez, in his Florida Probate & Trust Litigation Blog, discusses the right approach to establish paternity. The article begins as follows:
The U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households. Against this backdrop it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that questions about paternity are a common occurrence in probate proceedings, especially when the decedent dies intestate.
Now the bad news, as I’ve previously reported, if you happen to have been age 22 or older in 2009 (i.e., age 34 or older today) you are forever time barred from adjudicating paternity in a Florida probate proceeding … even if you have irrefutable DNA evidence backing you up. As a practical matter, this means that for middle aged adults (i.e., the most common age group for surviving children in most probate proceedings) all paternity actions are now time barred in probate. And that means there’s going to be a lot of pressure to find workarounds in those cases where paternity is factually undeniable. The “written acknowledgement” route for establishing paternity will seem like an easy answer. As demonstrated in the White v. Marks case below, it’s not.
To see the full article, click: “For out-of-wedlock children, what counts as a written acknowledgment of paternity?”.
Posted by Jessica Ji, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal.
Wealth Strategies Journal 