Paternity testing is something many mothers and alleged fathers want to have done to confirm who the biological parents are. There are many reasons for this including child support issues, parental rights issues, and emotional bonding issues to name a few. Most often parents will wait until the child is born to have a paternity test done as it is a simple process involving a buccal mouth swab to collect cheek cell DNA and is quite gentle on the baby.

There are some times, however, that a mother needs to have the information before the baby is born. Often this is done to help decide whether or not to keep the child or whether to consider other options like adoption or abortion and start taking steps in those directions. The uncertainty of not knowing who the father is can also cause a lot of stress to the mother, which is quite unhealthy for the baby.

A prenatal paternity test is a paternity test that is done before the baby is born. It can be done as early as 8 weeks into the pregnancy. Previous methods of doing prenatal paternity testing involved either amniocentesis, which uses a needle to extract amniotic fluid or chorionic villus sampling that involves removing chorionic villi cells from the placenta at the point where it attaches to the uterine wall. This is achieved by either using a needle or a catheter to suction the cells. The possibility of inducing a miscarriage in either of these processes makes these methods quite risky and only something to be done to detect chromosome abnormalities and genetic disorders and not for simply determining paternity.

Non-invasive prenatal paternity testing, however, only involves drawing blood from the mother who must be at least 8 weeks pregnant. The test analyzes free-floating fetal DNA from the mother’s plasma and compares it to the mother’s own DNA profile. The father in question also submits a buccal mouth swab and then the lab can determine from the genetic markers if the alleged father being tested is the biological father of the unborn child. There is no middle ground with the results. They will either be 0% if he is not the father and 99.99% if he is the father. Most testing results can be determined in about a week after samples have been submitted. This method is safe to the baby and safe to the mother as well. Prenatal paternity tests costs hundreds more than a post birth paternity test. They can range between $1500 to $2000 so these are only done if the information is vital to know right away.

Sibling DNA tests are most often done as an alternate way to determine paternity when the father is either unavailable for testing or unwilling to test. There are different types of DNA testing that will accomplish this.

Because of the fact that the father contributes 50% of his DNA to a child and the mother the other 50% full siblings will share 50% DNA with each other and half siblings will share 25% of the same DNA.

A full sibling vs. half sibling DNA test will determine if the siblings share the same mother and father. If the test determines they don’t share both parents and if the siblings are certain they share at least one parent in common, which is usually the mother, then they can conclude the test results mean that they are half siblings.

However, there have been cases where the children have been adopted and they were never told they were adopted and they assumed their mother gave birth to them when in fact that was not the case. There have also been cases of in vitro fertilization where the wrong egg was implanted into the mother and the mother gave birth to the child and didn’t know that child was not her biological child. Other cases the children assume they share the same father which is more difficult to take at face value than a woman actually giving birth.

So if a full vs. half sibling DNA test comes back as excluded as full siblings it doesn’t always mean that they are automatically half siblings. To be certain you know the truth and have all the facts it would be wise to then order a half vs. unrelated DNA test. If that test comes back as confirmed then you can be certain you are half siblings.

This testing of course should be at least 24 – 25 markers tested for the most accurate results. Many companies out there offering DNA testing are only testing 16 markers and that often results in inaccurate results in the testing. It costs less for a company to test 16 markers rather than 24 or 25 markers and these companies are all about profit not making sure you have the truth.

These tests can be life changing to the persons ordering the tests so spending a little bit more on something so important and knowing the real truth is worth the few extra dollars spent on the higher marker testing.

With ancestry DNA testing at an all time high and millions of people in the DNA registry the family tree of relationships often times reveals information that is life changing to persons. Imagine finding out you have a sibling that you never knew you had, or that your parent might not actually be your biological parent. Your whole world as you know it can instantaneously turn upside down. It can often be too much to emotionally process all on your own and this is where psychological counseling might come in handy.

Most of the time people decide to get an ancestry test out of simple curiosity about their origins, not expecting to find life changing answers about who they might be related to in the current generation.

I remember reading a story in the New York Post about a woman who had a German father and a Scottish English mother but couldnt find any matches between herself and her father. Instead she found a lot of Hispanic matches and it finally dawned on her that perhaps her dad was not really her dad and that she might be Hispanic instead of German.

This of course would mean that her mother was with someone other than her assumed father around the time of conception and that he would either know about it and have been keeping the truth from her or that he didn’t know either and was cheated on or that her mom was already pregnant when they met and withheld that information from him. You can see where this might cause relationship problems that didn’t exist before this information came to light.

The questions children face at this point is how hurtful is this information going to be if the parents are confronted with this information? Would it break up the family, would the father change his feelings toward the child once it is revealed it isn’t his? Would the child feel rejected or abandoned if this happened? These are only a few of the hundreds of possible questions that come up with this revelation of information.

In addition to immediate family bonding issues, there are also legal issues such as child custody, child support, inheritance and estate issues. Also there are cultural identity issues that can come up. Having professional help to sort through all the feelings and emotions and questions arising may be quite helpful and even necessary.

Many children trying to put the pieces together to find out the answers to who their real father is can sometimes find it tough to get answers from the adults who have a vested interest in others not knowing the real truth such as a mother who may have cheated and doesn’t want to lose child support or break up a marriage or a family.

Other reasons could have been a situation like rape and the shame and legal consequences involved with telling others is too much and it is something never talked about or to admitted to.

Or it could be that the suspected father doesn’t want the financial or emotional responsibility of a child and has rejected paternity claims. There are a vast number of possible reasons why parents lie to their children about who their father is.

This is unfortunately why DNA testing has become such a necessity in this day and age. Most specific relationship DNA testing is either a form of direct or indirect infidelity testing. Situations like adoption, in vitro fertilization, immigration and IRS tax requirements to prove declared dependents are an exception.

Some of the things at stake for knowing the truth about your biological father are:

Estate, Inheritance and Probate Issues
Child Custody
Parental Rights
Child Support
Inherited Health Issues
Adoption (Legal Verification of Biological Parents)
Establishing Emotional Bonds with the Biological Father

So what is a child to do if none of the parental figures in their lives will tell them the truth? Well there are alternative methods children can take into their own hands. They may not be able to go to their suspected father and ask him to take a mouth swab but they can find items that might contain his DNA that they can secretly have tested. Things such as chewing gum, nail clippings, ear wax on Q-tips, pieces of hair left in a hairbrush (as long as the root bulbs are still attached), cigarette butts, worn unwashed underwear, blood on a Band-Aid, a tissue that was sneezed into and so on.

If they don’t have access to these items from inside the suspected fathers house, once trash has been taken out to the curb for pickup there is no expectation of privacy but they still might want to check with their local ordinances to see if there are any restrictions on going through someones trash left outside.

If the grandparents of a suspected father are willing to take a grandparent DNA test that can help confirm whether or not a suspected father is the biological father. Often grandparents are more willing to know the truth about biological relationships and if a child is their grandchild than their kids are so it is worth asking them if they would.