Sham father

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This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Sham father or cuckoo father refers to the social father of a child ( cuckoo child ) who was or is in faith or who pretends to be the biological father of the child. Often, but not necessarily, it is also the legal father.

Law

The alleged father usually has a right to a judicial determination of paternity , namely if he is not already the legal father, or the right to contest paternity if he is already the legal father. A private paternity test is also possible (a parentage certificate with DNA analysis ), provided that the mother gives written consent to the test for the minor child. However, the result of such a test does not automatically lead to legal effects regarding the father-child relationship; However, such a test can be the basis for a decision in a judicial process to establish paternity or to contest paternity.

If a wife has withheld from her husband that another man could be the biological father for a legitimate child, this can lead to a reduction or cancellation of her maintenance after a divorce. This is especially true if the man has neglected his professional development for years because of his supposed biological child. However, the maintenance obligation towards the child remains until a paternity contestation becomes final.

With the successful contestation of paternity, the maintenance claim against the child lapses retrospectively and the claim to the maintenance already paid is transferred to the bogus father. However, there is currently no clear legal basis with which the pseudo father can assert a right to information from the mother in order to find out the biological father. The Federal Constitutional Court ruled on February 24, 2015 that the principle of good faith according to § 242 BGB is not a sufficient legal basis for such a right to information.

According to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court on April 19, 2016, the child is under no circumstances entitled to find out his biological father.

statistics

According to a British study of 3000 kinship examinations carried out between 1950 and 2004, the median rate of so-called "paternity discrepancies" is 3.7 percent. The authors of the study consider it likely that the increasing use of DNA analyzes will reveal more cases of cuckoo children and that their number will be corrected upwards.

According to a meta-analysis of 67 studies, the rate of false fathers among fathers is almost 2 percent. In the individual studies, the rates are between 0.4 percent and almost 12 percent. According to the studies, men who doubt rightly do so in 15 to 50 percent of cases.

literature

  • Hildegard Haas, Claus Waldenmaier: The cuckoo factor. Refined women? Hiding children? Doubting fathers? Gennethos, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-938321-00-8 ( review ).

Web links

Wiktionary: Scheinvater  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simone Schmollack: BGH on cuckoo children: The mother's lie can cost her maintenance. In: Der Spiegel . April 3, 2012, accessed on July 1, 2020 (report on bogus fathers in connection with a judgment of the Federal Court of Justice ).
  2. ↑ Notification: Right: Fictitious fathers may reduce maintenance after divorce. In: Doctors newspaper . May 15, 2012, accessed July 1, 2020 .
  3. ↑ BVerfG, February 24, 2015, AZ 1 BvR 472/14
  4. ↑ BVerfG, April 19, 2016, AZ 1 BvR 3309/13
  5. ↑ Mark Bellis: A testing time for fathers - More than one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child. (No longer available online.) Liverpool John Moores University , August 31, 2005, archived from the original on September 20, 2008 ; accessed on November 30, 2013 (English).
  6. ↑ Book Review: Testosterone Deficiency: From Hidden Children and Doubting Fathers. In: Doctors newspaper . November 2, 2004, accessed on November 30, 2013 (on Hildegard Haas, Claus Waldenmaier: The cuckoo factor. Refined women? Hidden children? Doubting fathers? Munich 2004): "Experts estimate that every tenth child in Germany is a" cuckoo child " . "
  7. ↑ Kermyt G. Anderson: How Well Does Paternity Confidence Match Actual Paternity? Evidence from Worldwide Nonpaternity Rates. In: Current Anthropology . Volume 48, No. 3, June 2006, pp. 513-520 ( PDF: 101 kB, 8 pages on anth.uconn.edu ( Memento from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive )) - quoted in: Axel Meyer: Doubtful Fatherhood : Cuckoo children more often than expected. In: Handelsblatt.de . January 7, 2010, accessed November 30, 2013 .