In the spotlight today
Judy rocks the House! – 2008-03-20
Deputy leader Judy Turner surprised everyone with a smart move in the House that saw her Member's Bill placed on Parliament's Order Paper relating to the right of fathers to have DNA tests to determine the parentage of their children.
Family Proceedings (Paternity Orders and Parentage Tests) Amendment Bill
Member's Bill
Explanatory note
The purposes of this Bill are to enable a male who has reasonable grounds to believe he either is or is not the father of a child to make an application for a paternity order; and to empower the Family Court to order that a buccal sample be taken from a child whose parentage is at issue or any person who may be the natural parent so that a parentage test can be carried out in respect of that child.
The Bill
Read it for yourself!
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From the press room
Barker "Head in the sand" on DNA paternity testing – 2008-03-13
UnitedFuture family spokesperson Judy Turner today quizzed Minister for Courts Rick Barker about why he has ignored recommendations from both the Law Commission and Law Society to empower the Family Court to order paternity testing.
"It is an outrage that many New Zealand kids are being prevented from knowing and having a relationship with their father because of an out-of-date statute that the Minister has been too lazy to update.
"But it's contemptuous and insulting that Minister Barker is trying to justify his lack of action by arguing that he is protecting children's, 'common law rights' not to undergo a simple DNA test.
"Both the man and the children involved have an absolute right to know whether they are father and child. This takes precedent over the child's right to be protected from a cheek swab."
Mrs Turner says that the Family Courts Matters Bill, which is currently before a select committee, is the perfect time to address this anomaly, but that Minister Barker has his head in the sand and is simply unwilling to do so.
"Paternity tests are cheap, easy and available – and yet unless the mother agrees, an estranged father has no right to prove whether he is or is not the parent," says Mrs Turner.
"If Labour really cares about families, they would empower the Family Court to order paternity tests to create certainly where doubt currently resides," says Mrs Turner.
Why Paternity Testing Matters
2008-03-20 12:45:00.0
AUTHOR: Judy Turner
A couple of years ago I heard the story of a court case involving a man who had lived with a woman for some time during which she became pregnant and had their child. He was with her throughout the pregnancy, at the birth and they continued to live together for the first four months after the birth.
She suddenly announced she was leaving and taking the child, that he wasn't the father and she wanted no further contact with him nor did she want him to see the child.
As he hadn't been named on a birth certificate he sought help to require a simple DNA test to establish whether or not he was the father, as he wanted to have ongoing contact and to support the child he still believed was his. The mother refused to give permission for the DNA test and so he ended up having a very expensive four year legal battle during which time he had no contact with his child. He finally won his case after a judge ruled that the child had to be put into the care of the Court for several hours so that the DNA test could be conducted (which of course proved he was the father), and then returned to the legal care of the mother.
This started me on a journey to discover how to correct this legal vacuum so that dad's could resolve paternity disputes in a timely way. Last week I questioned the Minister of Courts in the House as to why the government seemed to be dragging the chain on this matter despite a very compelling report on this matter by the Law Commission and despite the fact that the Law Society strongly advocates for this change.
At the end of the question I called a point of order and sought leave of the House to table my members bill "Family Proceedings (Paternity Orders and Parentage Tests) Amendment Bill". There was no objection and so this means that my Bill is now on the Order Paper listed under members Bills queuing to have its first reading.
Yes it has been a good week! Happy Easter everyone!
QUOTE:
"The particular human chain we're part of is central to our individual identity. Even if we loathe our families, in order to know ourselves, we seem to need to know about them, just as prologue. Not to know is to live with some of the disorientation and anxiety of the amnesiac"
Elizabeth Stone
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