It is very stressful and frightening to think that you may not be able to have contact with your children — and it is especially scary to think that you children could grow up not knowing that you are their father. Paternity issues are most common when two parents were never a couple or never lived with one another. There may be some confusion around who the father is, or the mother might intentionally deny who the father is in order to keep your children away from you.
At the Setzer Law Firm, it breaks our hearts to think that a young child could go through his or her life without knowing who to call father, especially when the father truly wants to know and have a relationship with the child.
Fortunately, we have a lot of tools at our disposal in the modern era, which can be used to easily prove paternity. Most importantly: the highly accurate process of DNA testing. If your paternity is being contested, this could play a vital role in establishing the paternity, parental visitation and/or custodial rights you desire.
It is significant to note that even if your name is featured on your son or daughter’s birth certificate, this does not necessarily entitle you to visitation, custodial, decision-making authority and other parental rights. For this reason, it is always in your best interests, and your child’s best interests, to formally establish paternity in court. Once a Texas father has obtained these parental rights, it is exceedingly difficult for such rights to be taken away from him.