PRACTICE AREAS

Establishing Rights And Obligations
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Unmarried Parents
‍If you have a child with someone you're not married to, and you've decided to split, you don't automatically get child support from that person until parentage is legally established. Similarly, if you're the father of a child and are not married to the mother, you can't exercise custody rights unless you are legally determined to be the father of the child. At DeLacey, Riebel & Shindell, LLP, our California attorneys can help establish parentage rights as a part of an effort to secure child support payments, or on behalf of an unmarried father who wants to have more say and more of a presence in a child's life.
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Either Parent Can Challenge Parentage
‍There may be valid reasons that either parent would choose to dispute the parentage of a child. A man who doesn't believe he is the father, for example, may want to take a parentage test to avoid paying child support for another man's child. Similarly, a woman who anticipated the assumed father to be unfit in some way may want to challenge a claim of parentage.

Same Sex Relationships
In same-sex couples, parentage becomes a bit more complicated and rests to some degree on the question of whether both parents had expressed intent to be a parent.