[goldstategop]

A paternity test does NOT establish who the father is. What it does is exclude someone from being a likely father. I can see a lot of men testing their kids to see if they are excluded from parental obligations in the event divorce proceedings are initiated.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Kozak]

A paternity test does NOT establish who the father is. What it does is exclude someone from being a likely father. I can see a lot of men testing their kids to see if they are excluded from parental obligations in the event divorce proceedings are initiated.

Technically correct, practically meaningless. A correctly done DNA analysis can establish a probability of paternity up to 99.9999%

[allmendream]

Of course it doesn't establish paternity to an unknown and untested quantity. DNA doesn't say “James Miller 1425 Oak Hill Drive”.

But the test IS capable of determining that the person who mom says is the father is NOT the father. Finding the “guilty party” is not the purview of the test, although if you got a DNA sample from yourself, your wife, and your ‘best friend’ (the likely suspect lets say) it would be additional confirmation that YOU dind’t pass the paternity test, but he DID.

That being said, about 70% of the people who purchase this test will in fact be relieved to find that they are the father of the child whose paternity they suspected. If someone suspects paternity enough to go get it tested, around 30% show that their suspicions were well founded.

But ‘paternity fraud’ is present in about 10% of the population, when you go out and look at them rather than waiting for them to come to you suspecting paternity (selection bias).