Court chooses paternity over biology
While the majority of justices sided with the child's non-biological father, Chief Justice Christine Durham dissented, saying the majority's opinion was based on a common-law legal standard that is almost 20 years old.
The ruling stems from a case in which a Utah woman married a man, but conceived a child from another man during an extramarital affair.
According to the ruling, the woman disclosed to her husband that the baby was not biologically his. The husband agreed that he would raise the child as if it were his own. Once the child was born, the husband's name was placed on the birth certificate as the child's father.
The child, referred to in court documents as "Z.P.," was visited by the biological father on two occasions during the first month, but not again until Z.P. was 13-months-old.
Nine months after Z.P.'s birth the mother and legal father divorced. Around that time, the biological father filed a petition to intervene in the divorce proceeding and establish himself as the child's legal father.
A 3rd District Court Commissioner denied the biological father's petition, finding that given his limited contact with Z.P. during his first two years of life, the man's intervention would prove disruptive to the "father-son relationship" with the boy's legal father.
That decision was overturned by a district court judge, who after hearing testimony from a social worker, concluded that the biological father did have a right to intervene for custody.
The legal father appealed to the Utah Court of Appeals, who overturned the district court's decision and agreed with the commissioner, ruling that the natural father's paternity claim would be too disruptive in the child's life.
In Tuesday's ruling, the majority of justices agreed that when a "marital father" has voluntarily agreed to assume a parental role with a child, any challenge to his presumed paternity is "disruptive and unnecessary."
"Such a challenge to the presumption of paternity of a marital father undermines the policy of preserving the stability of marriage when it interferes with parent-child relationships established during the marriage," Justice Matthew Durrant wrote in the majority opinion. "We also hold that such a challenge is disruptive and unnecessary where a committed and caring marital father has established a relationship with a child born into his marriage."
Recent comments
just found out my 12.5 daughter i've been raising 50% of the...
g | March 25, 2008 at 9:41 p.m.
If you plant your seeds on a plot of land that isn't yours, you...
Anonymous | March 20, 2008 at 12:19 a.m.
This is the right decision by the court. Any person who has sex...
enough is enough | March 20, 2008 at 12:19 a.m.
