Andrew Soshnick Comments on Pending Legislation in Paternity Cases

The Indiana General Assembly is hammering out legislation on paternity cases involving the father of a child after a paternity test solidifies his paternity, according to "Paternity Fatherhood: Children Born to Unwed Persons Do Not Automatically Have a Legal Father" in Indiana Lawyer. The legislation could require a court to look at several factors in the scenario, including the man's past relationship with the child, to determine if he should be allowed to share in the legal decisions and upbringing of the child, the story reported.

While attorneys agree joint legal custody has become the norm in dissolution of marriage cases, giving divorcing parents a way to continue making major life decisions for their children, paternity cases present a different set of circumstances whe re that partnership didn't exist in the first place, Indiana Lawyer reported. Attorneys have mixed feelings about the issue in paternity cases, seeing it as both appropriate and beneficial to children but also a possible danger to those who weren't aware of the son or daughter's birth, the story continued.

"We're talking about an extension of joint legal custody that we have in other contexts," Baker & Daniels' Andrew Soshnick, a past chair of the Indiana State Bar Association's Family and Juvenile Law Section, told Indiana Lawyer. "This legislation brings the paternity world much closer to paralleling the joint legal custody we have in the dissolution world."

In House Bill 1511, the legislation would create a statutory set of factors for judges to consider in deciding legal custody in paternity actions, Indiana Lawyer reported. State law currently gives only mothers legal custody for children born out of wedlock, and this bill would modernize Indiana law to reflect how many couples choose to live together and plan or have a family without getting married, according to the story. It mirrors the conditions in Indiana Code §31-17-2-15 involving child custody actions.