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Tex. Fam. Code § 160.302

EXECUTION OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PATERNITY

Known as the Uniform Parentage Act

The act spans §§ 160–160 (97 sections).

Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case In the Interest of Baby Boy R. (2006)

Most recently applied in Turk v. Mangum (July 2017)

Added by Acts 2001, 77th Leg., ch. 821, Sec. 1.01, eff

How often courts cite this section

20062010201720
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(a) An acknowledgment of paternity must:

(1) be in a record;

(2) be signed, or otherwise authenticated, under penalty of perjury by the mother and the man seeking to establish paternity;

(3) state that the child whose paternity is being acknowledged:

(A) does not have a presumed father or has a presumed father whose full name is stated; and

(B) does not have another acknowledged or adjudicated father;

(4) state whether there has been genetic testing and, if so, that the acknowledging man's claim of paternity is consistent with the results of the testing; and

(5) state that the signatories understand that the acknowledgment is the equivalent of a judicial adjudication of the paternity of the child and that a challenge to the acknowledgment is permitted only under limited circumstances.

(b) An acknowledgment of paternity is void if it:

(1) states that another man is a presumed father of the child, unless a denial of paternity signed or otherwise authenticated by the presumed father is filed with the vital statistics unit;

(2) states that another man is an acknowledged or adjudicated father of the child; or

(3) falsely denies the existence of a presumed, acknowledged, or adjudicated father of the child.

(c) A presumed father may sign or otherwise authenticate an acknowledgment of paternity.

(d) An acknowledgment of paternity constitutes an affidavit under Section 666(a)(5)(C), Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. Section 666(a)(5)(C)).

Official source: Texas Constitution and Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Texas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.