Man loses paternity case despite producing DNA result to show child is his

A court yesterday dismissed a paternity suit brought by a man who claimed to be the father of a child born to a married woman after finding that the man had not produced enough evidence to overturn the civil status that the child had through his birth certificate. The judgement was delivered by Mr Justice Robert G Mangion in the Family Court. The court heard that the man, AB, was claiming to be the father of a child born to XY while the latter was married to another man. The child's birth certificate showed that he was born in a marriage and had the status of a legitimate child. But AB told the court that he had had an adulterous relationship with XY and that the DNA testing which he had secretly carried out without the mother's knowledge showed that the child was in fact his and not the offspring of XY's husband. In yesterday's judgement the court pointed out that the Civil Code provided that the filiation of a child born in wedlock could be contested if it could be proven that the mother had committed adultery in a period before the child's birth and if genetic testing proved that the child was not that of the mother's husband. But another section of the Code, namely section 81,...