Men: Hire a Paternity Lawyer Early to

Protect Your Custody Rights

When it comes to matters of paternity, a lawyer hired early in the game can help protect your child custody rights and visitation rights and help prevent burdensome back child support payments. A paternity lawyer can also help be sure the amount of child support is fair. The best divorce advice for men says that fathers who wait too long to establish paternity for their child put themselves at risk for a decreased chance of physical custody or joint custody rights and increased chance of paying child support arrears.

When it comes to custody and child support cases, courts are mandated to act in the best interests of the children involved. This usually means enforcing the father’s obligation to provide financial support for the child and preserve the status quo of the relationship between father and child. So a father who is generally absent from a child’s life for several years before paternity is established is likely to not be awarded much visitation. But he can be required to pay child support and can even be required to pay child support retroactively.

Establishing paternity early in the child’s life and hiring a paternity lawyer can protect your rights to visitation and increase your chances of gaining custody of the child if that’s your goal. It can also keep child support payments from being overly burdensome by eliminating retroactive payments.

Ways to establish paternity
The most irrefutable way to establish, or deny, paternity is through DNA testing. This is usually done by comparing DNA in blood samples of the parents and child. DNA testing is 95 to 99 percent accurate and meets the burden of proof requirement in South Carolina courts.

If you and the child’s mother disagree about whether you are the father of her child, DNA testing will sway the court’s verdict in almost every case. Sometimes, in a paternity dispute case, lawyers will have a DNA test done before the court orders one to present the evidence at trial.

If you and the child’s mother agree that you are the child’s mother, there are legal procedures that can establish your paternity without DNA testing.

Get Free Consultation from Paternity Lawyer: Divorce Advice for Men

If you need paternity and divorce advice for men to protect your child custody rights, attorney Lindsay Blanks can talk with you about your case free of charge. Click here for your free consultation with paternity lawyer Lindsay Blanks.
 
Or you can call E. Lindsay Blanks PAtoday at 843-863-1800.

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