The general consensus is that children benefit from having multiple adults in their lives who will love and care for them. Often there is no dispute over who should take responsibility for a child’s upbringing. In some instances, however, a child’s legal parentage is in question – leading to additional questions about who is responsible for supporting the child financially and providing the child with support and guidance as they grow, as well as equally significant questions about who has the right to make important decisions about the child’s medical care, religious instruction, and other key areas of life in which parental choices normally play a formative role. If you have questions about establishing a child’s legal parentage in South Carolina, the family law attorneys at King Law Offices may be able to provide you with answers that help you understand your options. Call 888-748-KING to schedule a consultation.
What Is Parentage?
“Parentage” is a noun for identifying “where a child comes from” – who the child’s parents are (or were). Usually parentage is, like lineage (a broader term which encompasses multiple generations, rather than just one), meant in a biological sense, but the biological connotation is not obligatory.
Parentage vs. Parenting
Like parenting, parentage is a gender-neutral term that can apply to a child’s parenting, which focuses on the adult activities involved in raising a child and tends to focus on the parents’ efforts, parentage is more commonly used in reference to the child. To speak of someone’s “parentage” is to speak of their parents, not of their own activities, regardless of the person’s age – or, in other words, speaking of an adult’s parentage means speaking of who the adult’s parents are or were, not of the parenting activities in which that adult is currently engaged; speaking of their child’s parentage, on the other hand, would refer back to that adult.
Parentage vs. Paternity
Paternity is a subset of parentage (which would also include maternity, although “maternity” is more often used to describe the period in which a woman is pregnant with a child than the state of being the mother to a child). While the word “parentage” can have a number of implications depending on the context, establishing parentage usually has a medical or legal connotation – determining whose genetics are relevant to a child’s medical history, or determining who is legally responsible for the child’s care. Although these factors are of equal importance regardless of the parent’s gender, for practical reasons it is far more common for questions to arise about a child’s biological parentage in relation to paternity, rather than maternity. Because in most South Carolina contexts legal parentage is based on biological parentage, it is very common for the need to establish legal parentage to be linked to a paternity dispute.
How Is a Child’s Legal Parentage Established in South Carolina?
More often than not, a child’s legal parentage and his or her biological parentage are the same. Adoption cases present the most obvious exception, as adoption law exists primarily to establish legal parentage, and the attendant parental rights and obligations, where there is no biological parent-child relationship.
Legal parentage on both sides (matrilineal and patrilineal) may be established by adoption proceedings in the absence of a biological relationship (or when the biological relationship is something other than parent-child – for instance, as when an aunt or uncle adopts a niece or nephew). Otherwise, the formal procedures for establishing legal parentage are aimed primarily at verifying paternity, given how infrequently disputes over the legitimacy of a biological mother-child relationship arise. These procedures are delineated in Chapter 17 of the South Carolina Children’s Code, but a family law attorney with King Law Offices may be able to help you understand the formal legal process in greater detail during a personalized consultation.
Presumptive Paternity
If a child’s mother is married at the time of birth, the husband is legally presumed to be the father. This presumption can be challenged in court, as sometimes happens during South Carolina divorce proceedings, particularly when one party has cited adultery as their grounds in filing for divorce under S.C. Code § 20-3-10 (2024). If presumptive paternity is challenged, S.C. Code § 63-17-30 provides for verification via genetic testing.
Verified Voluntary Acknowledgement
S.C. Code § 63-17-50 allows for paternity to be legally established by means of a voluntary verified acknowledgement, commensurate with the Paternity Acknowledgement Affidavit provided by the South Carolina Department of Social Services (DSS). The verified voluntary acknowledgement is frequently used in cases where a child’s parents are not legally married, but there is no real dispute as to the child’s parentage.
Because even very involved and committed fathers do not enjoy a legal presumption of paternity if they are not married to the child’s mother at the time the child is born, the verified voluntary acknowledgement or paternity acknowledgement affidavit serves to establish the biological father’s legal rights and responsibilities with respect to the child. These responsibilities typically include child support obligations, but if a verified voluntary acknowledgement of paternity is signed then the formal proceedings that often attend a contested child support case opened with DSS may be streamlined.
Genetic Testing
The use of genetic testing to establish a child’s legal parentage in what the South Carolina Children’s Code calls “contested paternity” cases is so widespread that the tests ordered by South Carolina courts to resolve disputes over legal parentage on the basis of biological paternity are often referred to in popular parlance as “paternity tests.” Genetic testing to determine paternity is not usually necessary in cases where a verified voluntary acknowledgement has already been signed, or where there is an unchallenged presumption of paternity due to marital status, although occasionally families may perform these tests for reasons other than establishing a child’s legal paternity when there is question over whether the child’s legal and biological parentage coincide (medical purposes are the most common example).
Genetic testing, as noted, can also be used to resolve a paternity dispute in cases where a presumption of paternity has been challenged. One useful way of thinking about establishing legal parentage through genetic testing is that biological paternity functions as a “fallback” method for determining parentage when the question cannot be satisfactorily resolved by other means.
Why Is Legal Parentage Important?
Outside the context of adoption cases, the need to establish legal parentage in South Carolina most commonly arises when a child’s biological parentage is in question for some reason – principally because, absent an adoption scenario, a biological relationship is the “default” means of establishing legal parentage in this state. Often the central issue at stake is a determination of who has financial responsibility for the child, typically in the form of child support; the desire to assert paternal custody rights is another common reason for seeking to establish legal parentage of a child. Legal parentage can have enormous implications for child support, child custody, and the exercise of parental prerogatives.
Speak With a South Carolina Family Law Attorney
Establishing a child’s legal parentage can have important implications for both child custody rights and child support obligations. In many situations, neither parental rights nor the corresponding parental responsibilities are in dispute. When there is a question, however, clearly establishing legal parentage can resolve lingering questions and lay the groundwork for families to move forward. Call 888-748-KING today to speak with a family law attorney at King Law Offices and learn more about establishing a child’s legal parentage in South Carolina.