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35 B.C. L. Rev. 747 (1993-1994)
Implications of DNA Technology on Posthumous Paternity Determination: Deciding the Facts When Daddy Can't Give His Opinion

handle is hein.journals/bclr35 and id is 757 raw text is: IMPLICATIONS OF DNA TECHNOLOGY ON POSTHUMOUS PATERNITY DETERMINATION: DECIDING THE FACTS WHEN DADDY CAN'T GIVE HIS OPINION Paternity practice has suffered from the old saw to the effect that maternity is a matter of fact whereas paternity is a matter of opinion. ' In twelfth-century Japan, a person claiming to be an heir of the deceased pricked his or her finger and caused a drop of blood to drip on the deceased's skeleton.2 Paternity was established if the bones absorbed the blood.3 If the putative father was still alive, the parties combined drops of their blood in a basin and paternity was established if the drops merged.4 Folklore such as this, and other primitive meth- ods used until the early part of this century, were fifty percent accurate, at best.5 Increasingly sophisticated scientific tests developed during the last few decades, however, have raised the probability of excluding a falsely accused man to over ninety percent, greatly reducing the risk of undetected fraudulent claims.6 Modern scientific paternity tests examine putative fathers for the genetic traits required of the biological father.7 If a candidate lacks genetic traits that must be present in the child's biological father, he is absolutely excluded from paternity.8 The presence of identical traits in both child and putative father is not, however, absolute proof of paternity, because each of the tested traits occurs in a large subgroup of the population.9 Thus, a paternity index is calculated using knowl- 1 HARRY D. KRAusE, FAMILY LAW 934 (3d ed. 1990). 2 Sdentfic Testing for Paternity Establishment, in BRINGING AND DEFENDING CONTESTED PA- TERNITY CASES: PRACTICING UNDER G.L. CA-rmTER 209C 91 (Mass. Cont. Legal Educ. ed., 1989). 5IL 4 & 5Id& 6 Id. 7 Steven R. Lake & Mary D. Paulsen, From Here to Paternity, FAM. ADvoc. 40,41-42 (Summer 1985). 8 Id- at 42. 9 See infra notes 88-89 and accompanying text for a discussion of why identical traits do not necessarily prove paternity.

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