In the Interest of J.W.T., 25 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 193 (1993).
Callender v. Skiles, Supreme Court of Iowa
Mills v. Habluetzel, 456 U.S. 91 (1982).
In Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (1989), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution did not require states to grant the paramour a paternity claim.
However, on the state level, one of the leading opinions on the subject was written by Chief Justice Cardozo when he was sitting on the New Yourk Court of Appeals. In In re Findlay, 253 N.Y. 1, 170 N.E. 471 (1930), he rejected the application of the presumption that the offspring of a married woman is deemed to be the legitimate child of her husband in a case in which a woman left her husband in England, came with her lover to America, and had three sons by him, all of whom he acknowledged.
The lower courts held that these boys were lawfully presumed to be the children of the husband notwithstanding the unimpeached evidence to the contrary, but the Court of Appeals reversed. Chief Justice Cardozo declared:
...[T]he courts are generally agreed that countervailing evidence may shatter the presumption though the possibility of access is not susceptible of exclusion to the point of utter demonstration. Issue will not be *******ized as the outcome of a choice between nicely balanced probabilities .... They will not be held legitimate by a sacrifice of probabilities in a futile quest for certainty. ... The presumption does not consecrate as the truth the extravagantly improbable. ...
As to the issue of standing, some courts have ruled that it violates Equal Protection to deny the child himself or herself a claim for paternity. Spada v. Pauley, 385 N.W.2d 746 (Mich Ct App 1986) (mother's paternity claim was barred by statute of limitations; paternity claim in divorce action brought by the putative father who had married her several years after the birth of the child was precluded; denial of paternity claim asserted later by her son, then a teenager, unconstitutional). SeeR. McG v. J.W., 615 P.2d 666 (Colo. 1981).
And finally, on the state level, the question of standing is a matter of law.
For example, California holds that a nonmarital father does not have standing to sue an intact family to assert his rights of fatherhood. Two other UPA states, Colorado and Texas, have declared that under their state constitutions the father may not be denied such rights. Similarly, the binding effect of a judgment on the child or on others seeking to claim a benefit of the judgment or collaterally attack that judgment is very confused in the case law. UPA (1973) was entirely silent as to the relationship between a divorce and a determination of parentage.