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'Equitable Paternity'

By ALM Staff | Law Journal Newsletters |
October 30, 2006

He who acts like a father is a father ' at least legally, even if not biologically. New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, concluded this in a recent ruling, imposing 'equitable paternity' on a man who wrongly assumed he had fathered a daughter and acted accordingly. The court upheld the trial and appellate courts in ordering a man to pay child support on behalf of a child he did not father. In doing so, it recognized the legislatively endorsed concept of 'equitable paternity,' or paternity by estoppel (see NY Family Court Act ” 18 [a] and 532 [a]). Matter of Shondel J. v. Mark D., 40, July 6, 2006.

The Case

Shondel J. centers on a Guyana native living in New York who met a woman in Guyana while visiting family in 1995. After the man, Mark D., returned to New York, the woman, Shondel J., informed him that she was pregnant and carrying his child. Mark did not dispute his paternity. Instead, he helped pay for Shondel's pregnancy, visited the girl he thought was his daughter, and made her a beneficiary of his life insurance. He also signed a letter affirming his fatherhood so the child could obtain immigration papers. In 1999, he married another woman, and they subsequently had children of their own.

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