27 January 2025
As we start 2025, the evolving realities of direct-to-consumer DNA tests, political uncertainty and demand for foreign citizenship are increasingly calls to action. As people seek to understand and address these challenges it can create complex inter-related personal and legal questions. Such questions are increasingly drawing together and necessitating solutions that require specialist family law expertise. Successfully navigating a path through these choppy waters can require expert management and bespoke family law strategies to address the implications of genetic testing, legal and biological parentage, an application for a Declaration of Parentage and rectification of a birth certificate.
Genetic Testing and Family Law
Over the last 25 years, it is estimated that more than 40 million people around the globe have undergone direct-to-consumer DNA tests through companies such as Ancestry, 23andMe and MyHeritage to satisfy personal curiosity, learn more about their personal ancestry and trace genetic relatives. However, in doing so complex situations can rapidly unfold, creating a far more nuanced and challenging picture that can uncover secret love affairs and infidelity, unknown relatives, IVF mix-ups, fertility fraud, donor conception and adoption. This can have far reaching implications not just for those undertaking an at-home DNA test but for their families too including spouses, partners, children, aunts, uncles and siblings. The results and implications of at-home DNA testing can upend people’s lives. They can undermine trust in loved ones and family relationships. They can change established family history, create uncertainty, overwhelm people and require expert management to deal with the ramifications in practice.
Direct-to-consumer DNA testing can also create a range of complex legal issues as people then seek to legally clarify/rectify/underpin and evidence their biological and legal parentage, genetic and family history/relationships and their personal and legal identity. This can require bespoke family law strategies and specialist management to resolve legal questions about: parentage, birth certificates, financial support for minor children, inheritance and claims for foreign citizenship.
Foreign Citizenship and Family Law
Political uncertainty, rapidly evolving geo-politics, conflict and war and desire for international mobility are just some of the factors fuelling demand for foreign citizenship. In today’s increasingly uncertain world, where political and regime change bring new economic challenges and where restrictive laws and policies curtail human rights and freedoms and restrict access to healthcare, employment and foreign residency the benefits of foreign citizenship are increasingly coming into focus for growing numbers of people. Added to this, the ability to obtain foreign citizenship can dictate all manner of personal decisions and outcomes involving romantic relationships, family life, leisure time and retirement.
However, demand for foreign citizenship can lead to complex family law issues when individuals (1) lack clarity about their parentage and/or (2) encounter difficulties documenting and evidencing their claim to foreign citizenship. This can in turn require effective family law strategies and expert management to successfully resolve and clarify parentage and build the evidence trail required for citizenship applications.
Legal and Biological Parentage & Birth Certificates
As such, the results of a direct-to-consumer DNA test or a desire to obtain foreign citizenship can raise complex questions about an individual’s parentage, family history and relationships and/or their birth certificate.This can lead to a range of family law issues that require specialist expertise including:
- Wish to connect with an unknown/absent parent (e.g. following adoption, passage of time, disconnected family history).
- Clarifying and confirming biological and/or legal parentage (e.g. following assisted conception, adoption, death of parent, lack of parental cooperation).
- Need to rectify an inaccurate birth certificate (e.g. problems with spelling of names, wrong person recorded as parent).
- Desire to add birth parent’s name to birth certificate (e.g. an individual is ‘fatherless’ with no father listed on birth certificate or following adoption).
- An application for a Declaration of Parentage in the English Family Court (e.g. to legally resolve legal and/or biological parentage).
To find out more about an application for a Declaration of Parentage in the English Family court click here.
To read more about genomics, genetics and family law click here.
Need a Family Lawyer?
Do you need expert legal help to navigate genetic testing, legal and biological parentage, an application for a Declaration of Parentage or rectification of a birth certificate? If you would like to discuss your situation or you would like specialist legal advice contact Louisa Ghevaert by email louisa@louisaghevaertassociates.co.uk or by telephone +44 (0)20 7965 8399.
Images: Louisa Ghevaert, CEO & Founder Louisa Ghevaert Associates
