CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN

AFRICA

AMECEA

UNIT NAME: INSURANCE LAW

STUDENT’S NAME: PHILLIP KEMBO

LECTURER:

QUESTION: CHILD LAW.

The statement “I am not the father,” is a statement that calls for child-parent relationship in a
relationship dispute between a man and a woman. This being the fact, the courts are called to
resolve this by trying to establish the real parent to the child, in our case, to establish the real father.

This paper seeks to discuss the question of paternity of DNA, in the event that a man refuses that
he is the father to a child, whether born or not yet. The discussion shall use case laws to establish
the validity or grounds of the arguments brought forward to support this or dispute paternity and
is responsibilities.

Paternity.

Paternity concerns itself with a link of a child with its biological father, the one who impregnated
the mother. It is thus, about the man who holds the responsibilities or obligations as well as rights
in the way a child should be brought up and associated with, although it is neglected at ties. It is
neglected at the basis that a man refuses categorically that he fathered a child. This fact brings to
question, the lineage of a child.

Children and the Law.

Traditionally, children born out of or to unmarried parents were ridiculed as children without
identity. Such children, were denied many privileges and rights and this is seen on how
traditionally they were discriminated among other children whose parents or fathers were known.
In the western countries, these were at times called bastards, like Chancellor Kent once stated
expressing his view. “A bastard being in the eye of the law nullius filius (child of no one). He has
no inheritable blood, and is incapable to his father or his mother or to anyone else, nor can he have
heirs but his own body” this was so because a man who was unmarried had no legal right to custody
of a child whose mother would claim paternity. The judge was trying to discourage illicit
commerce between sexes hence a denial to privileges to a child born out of such relationships.

The number of children born out of such relationships continue to increase in society and this
brought about a different view on how the children are looked at, in the case of Levi, V. Louisiana,
the supreme court of the United State held that illegitimate children had the ability to sue on behalf
of the deceased parent’s behalf. Thus, like other children, such children had a right to equal
protection before the law.t
References.

1. https://books .google.co.ke. Commentaries on American Law, by Kent, J. 1836.

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org>wiki>levy,2018.