Without the results of a scientifically reliable paternity test, determining the biological father is based mainly on the claims of the mother and of the alleged father(s).

And while sometimes the mother may have had sexual relations with multiple men around the suspected time of conception and genuinely doesn’t know who the biological father is, some women lie about the paternity of their children.

This is known as child identity fraud, or paternity fraud, and it is a serious violation of both the real father’s paternity rights and the child’s right to know who his or her biological parents are and have a relationship with them, as stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

One of the main problems with paternity fraud is the obsolete legislation, which reflects neither the evolution of social structures and the weakening of traditional, long-lasting marriages, nor the widespread availability of modern DNA testing, which can determine biological paternity with near-perfect accuracy.
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In many cases, if the law presumes the husband of a woman to be the father by default, a man who knows or reasonably suspects that he is the real father has absolutely no legal recourse to challenge this presumption of paternity. In other cases, there are certain time periods within which paternity claims must be filed in order to be considered.

To complement accurate and affordable paternity tests, there need to be changes in the law to reflect these developments, and to ensure the rights of the child and the biological father, as well as to protect the man falsely named the father from fraud (since paternity fraud is usually done for the mother to claim child support from the defrauded man).
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