Enjoy Your Full Rights As A Father By Establishing Paternity

In Washington, the child-father relationship is legally established automatically when the parents are married at the time of the child’s birth. But for couples who are not married when their child is born — an increasingly common occurrence — it takes some extra work to legally establish a father’s paternity.

Establishing paternity may seem like a formality, but it has real consequences in a family’s life and it shouldn’t be skipped over. By going in for a DNA test and registering the results with Washington’s legal system, both parents benefit: the mother gains a legal right to assistance from the child’s father, and the father gains the legal right to custody or visitation time with his child.

Your relationship with your son or daughter is too important for it to depend on staying in their mother’s good graces. As a father, you have a right to a relationship with your child no matter what the future brings. At Hansen Law, we can help you secure those rights quickly and effectively.

Establishing Paternity Delivers Real Benefits To Parents

On a basic level, establishing the paternity of a child provides information that every family member should have — a child deserves to know with certainty who his or her father is, and both parents have good reasons to want this information as well.

But establishing paternity is not just about answering a question in theory — identifying the biological father of a child comes with a specific set of rights and responsibilities for the father as well as the mother, and of course there are benefits for your son or daughter.

For your child, establishing paternity helps them:

• Maintain a stable and healthy relationship with both of their parents.
• Have access to important information about their family history, including their medical history.
• Secure access to benefits as a dependent of their parent, such as medical insurance, life insurance, Social Security benefits, veterans benefits and inheritance of a parent’s estate.

For a child’s mother, establishing paternity provides an opportunity to:

• Share the responsibilities of parenthood in a fair and balanced manner between two parents.
• Share the financial costs of raising a child, both informally and through formal court-mandated child support payments.

For a child’s father, establishing paternity provides an opportunity to:

• Legally establish his legal rights to custody or visitation.
• Maintain a stable and healthy relationship with his child.

Call Us To Schedule A Consultation

To learn more about how Hansen Law, PLLC, can help you legally document the paternity of your child, call 509-388-0160 to schedule an initial consultation in Yakima, Washington. You may also email our firm.