Understanding Your Paternity Case
If you have been named in an action involving the establishment of paternity or the request of child support based upon you signing a paternity affidavit, chances are the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s IV-D (or child support) division has filed an action seeking an order for support and medical insurance. This is an important matter and you should treat it as such. Make sure that you attend all court hearings and proceedings, because you could lose any say that you have in matters related to paternity, support, the last name of the child, visitation, and custody.
Paternity Affidavit Cases
Often times this will be referred to as signing the birth certificate, but in reality when you are doing that you are signing a Paternity Affidavit. Under Indiana law, a mother of the child and a man who is likely to be the father of the child can acknowledge that he is the father by signing the affidavit. This creates certain rights, but also takes away certain rights if not filed in a timely manner. If the IV-D office has brought an action seeking a child support order based on the acknowledgement of paternity then you won’t have the same rights to a genetic test that exist under an Establishment of Paternity action.
Often times the central questions that are raised in Paternity Affidavit hearings are similar to that of a Paternity Establishment hearing. The issue of custody will be raised as will visitation. It is everyone’s best interest if these matters are discussed before the hearing. You will also have to deal with the issue of child support.
Paternity Establishment Cases
Although both paternity establishment and paternity affidavit cases attempt to answer the same questions of who should pay support, how much should be paid, what sort of visitation schedule should be in place, who should have custody, and what should the child’s last name be; the paternity establishment case has to answer one very important question: who is the father?
Only upon establishing who is the legal father of the child can you create rights and responsibilities in the father of the child. In most settings paternity is established in one of two ways, the father admits that the child is his or the court orders genetic testing to be performed and the results come back positive. Once either of these have occurred then the court will go forward and establish all other orders.
Establishing Child Support in Paternity Cases
In all paternity cases, the court must consider the issue of child support, even if the amount of an order will be $0. This is done through the use of a child support worksheet. The child support worksheet is the same whether it is a divorce matter or paternity matter and will consider the same factors in both settings.
The first thing to consider is what is the income of each party. This is the amount of money that mom and dad make individually from all sources (please note, money received from SSI or TANF is not considered income for purposes of a child support worksheet). Other information that is relevant to the child support worksheet, is how many children do you have, how many child support orders do you have to pay, what are the amounts of those orders, who provides health insurance, how much does it cost, is there a daycare expense, and how many overnight visits are there with the non-custodial parent.
Once all of those factors have been considered, the child support worksheet will have a recommended amount of support to be paid by the non-custodial parent. This amount is what is typically ordered in a paternity case, although the court does have discretion to deviate from this amount based on the evidence that is heard.
Co-Parenting and Paternity Cases
Regardless of whether it is a paternity affidavit or paternity establishment case, you will likely have to attend a co-parenting class. This class is aimed at helping you learn how to parent the child together.
The Court will likely enter an order that is based on the Indiana Parenting Time Guidelines or something to which both parties agree. If there is a disagreement over parenting time, the Court may order a specific time schedule.
