Senate bill aims to define 'parentage'

Parentage seems simple enough in concept: A husband and wife produce a child and, in the process, receive all the legal rights that come with becoming parents.

But in the real world of genetic testing, reproductive miracles and lawsuits, defining parentage has become a complicated nightmare.

For example, "It's always been assumed under the law that the birth mother was the biological mother," said Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, the sponsor of a bill that attempts to define parentage. "But with surrogate mothers, that is no longer the case."

SB45, scheduled for final passage in the Senate later today, attempts to "answer questions that have never been answered before," Hillyard said. And in some cases, the questions have never even been asked before.

"We are setting up the rules and regulations for biological fathers and for social fathers," he said.

That is a new frontier for lawmakers and a sticky issue for state social workers who have to wade through case after case where determining paternity is anything but a simple task.

The most common problem: a husband who thought he was the biological father only to discover he was not, Hillyard said.

"The statistics I have heard is that 1 out of every 10 women who have a baby, the husband is not the biological father of that baby," he said.

And then there are questions of the rights of biological parents in adoption cases and assisted reproduction and any number of other outcomes whereby the husband may not be the biological father.

Is the issue really a problem in Utah? Hillyard, a family law attorney, says paternity rights of biological and non-biological parents have become a major issue, and the potential for litigation has increased exponentially in recent years with the perfection of DNA testing and reproductive technologies.

The U.S. District Court struck down much of Utah's existing law banning contracts for surrogate mothers. "If we do nothing about gestational agreements, then we have no law and anything goes," Hillyard said.

And Utah's paternity laws have simply not kept pace. For example, what about the current law that says when a child born to a woman within 10 months of her divorce, then her ex-husband is "presumed" to be the biological father?

And common sense dictates that a rapist who impregnates his victim would never be entitled to visitation rights with the child. But there is nothing in the current law that spells that out.