Where the parents of a child are not married to each other, a Complaint to Establish Paternity can be brought by either the mother who seeks support for the child or the father who seeks custody of or contact with the child.

The scientific accuracy of genetic testing has almost completely removed the issue of paternity itself as a contested issue that courts must decide.

Although the firm handles far more divorce-related matters than paternity cases, we have litigated a number of paternity matters with unusual circumstances, including equity actions in which the mother was married to someone other than the child’s father at the time of the child’s birth. We represented the father in the case of O’Meara v. Doherty, (2002) where the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld the Judgment of the Probate and Family Court upon the mother’s appeal. That decision deals with the circumstance of a substantial delay between the birth of the child and the mother’s claim for support. Its message is clear, that although the statute directs that support shall be ordered back to the date of the child’s birth, the loss resulting from a delay in making the paternity claim may be substantial.