When it comes to children, whether planned or unplanned, both the mother and father have certain rights when it comes to both involvement in the child's life, as well as whether or not the child will be put up for adoption. If you are a father, or you expect you may have gotten a woman pregnant, it's important to understand your rights of paternity both before and after the birth.
Informed of Adoption
One of the most important paternal rights a father has is the right to be informed that his child may go up for adoption. However, if the father cannot be found, or if no one steps up and claims paternity for the child, the mother may continue with adoption proceedings without consent, terminating paternal rights. If you want to protect your rights to the child, you can register in your state's Putative Father Registry if one is available, to start the process. According to Adopting.org, protecting these rights may also bring on certain responsibilities including support payments or a liability to help cover the medical bills related to the birth.
Adoption Consent
Once the father has been notified that his child is being put up for adoption, he must provide voluntary consent for the adoption to occur. If it is possible that multiple men could potentially be the father of the child, each potential father must sign a waiver of consent before an adoption can continue. It cannot just be assumed that the father gives consent; if the father cannot be found, it falls to the attorney for the adoption to perform due-diligence to take the steps necessary to find the father through research or actions like an ad in the newspaper.
Right to Parent
A father also has the paternal right to choose to parent and fight a mother's request to put the child up for adoption. These rights exist under certain circumstances, such as if the father is listed on the child's birth certificate, a court ruling has proven paternity, the father is openly living with the mother of the child or has already provided substantial child support payments for the child.
Denying Paternity
Finally, a potential father has the right to deny that the child is his, as well as the right to give up being a father. To deny paternity, the man must do so formally by filling out the necessary state forms. These forms may be accompanied by a paternity test, which is typically performed by brushing a cotton swab on the inner cheek in order to compare DNA with a sample from the child. If the test comes back negative, the man is not responsible for anything related to the child. If the test comes back positive, he may choose to give up parental rights to see the child, but this does not get rid of his responsibility to possibly pay child support.
