Paternity Test Allows Young Man to Move On

Paul decided to order a paternity test to determine whether Sam was his biological son. Having been a devoted father to Sam, now aged seven, Paul said. “I was in complete shock. It wasn’t what I wanted.” But after attending Sam’s birth, Paul says he felt “humbled and happy. The nurses had to prise him out of my arms to do the normal tests”.

Paul and Sam’s mother were reunited briefly after he was born, but when they split again Paul regularly drove over 100 miles to see him. “We were very close,” says Paul, “we went everywhere together.”

Doubts Over Paternity?

Shortly after Sam’s fifth birthday, Paul, 38, met Marian and within a few months had asked her to marry him. Marian also became close friends with Paul’s mother. Unfortunately during during one of the couple’s visits to her home, and in a moment of frustration at the noise Sam was making as he played, Paul’s mother said to Marian: “Well, he’s no grandson of mine!” When Marian asked her to explain, “She was vague, and didn’t want to go into details.

Slowly, other people’s doubts about whether Sam was his son began to become apparent and a day before the couple’s wedding Paul’s former girlfriend threatened that he would never see Sam again if the marriage went ahead. Paul said that he would have a paternity test to prove he was Sam’s father and would then seek a court order granting him access. “I did not have any doubts that the test would prove positive and would settle things once and for all,” he says about the paternity test.

Results are Conclusive

Once the paternity test had been carried out Paul had only to look at Marian’s face when he returned from work to know the test had proved that Sam’s DNA did not match his own.

The advent of the paternity DNA test in the past fifteen years has left no room for doubt in establishing paternity, and is being used increasingly in such cases to lay to rest the doubts and suspicions of parents and children alike.

Nature Versus Nurture

As he continues to struggle with the outcome of the paternity test he carried out on Sam, Paul is clear about where he stands on the nature-versus-nurture debate. “Anyone can plant a seed,” he says, “but it takes a gardener to grow a flower. It takes a man to raise a child. For six years I know I made a good job of raising that lad. I fed him, watched him smile and cry. I taught him to ride a bike. When he was scared I was there.”

After receiving the paternity test result, Paul and Marian asked Sam’s mother if they could adopt the boy, but she did not want Marian to become his adoptive mother.

New Beginnings

Marian later gave birth to the couple’s first child, and Paul’s advice to those considering a paternity test would be to seek professional counseling before doing so. “Any man thinking of doing this should think hardest of all about how he’ll cope if the result of the test is the opposite of what he expects. Am I glad I did it? Yes and no,” he says. “Yes, I know the truth, but at what cost?”