Steps For Filing A Parentage Case - California Courts: Fill & Download for Free

Family law courts are mostly open, not closed. I don’t know where Rand Knight is based, but in California and, so far as I know, other U.S. states, family law court proceedings are open, not closed; court reporters can report the court proceedings and transcripts can indeed be purchased.But I am talking about divorce/dissolution of marriage cases. Parentage (paternity) cases in California are still treated as confidential, meaning the court files are not accessible except to the parties and their attorneys of record. However, the actual hearings, in my experience, are in fact open in most cases. Out of the thousands of cases I heard, if memory serves, I closed my courtroom fewer than five times. It was very rare that someone asked that the courtroom be closed.And dependency court cases—where the state in the form of child protective services is stepping in to protect children, as contrasted to cases in which the legal dispute is between the parents or, occasionally, other relatives such as grandparents—are indeed closed.Court bias in child custody cases. As to the claims of court bias, I don’t doubt that some individual judicial officers may hold views that in effect favor the parent of one sex, but how pervasive this is is very unclear. It would be great if researchers could actually do serious studies to measure such things, but I acknowledge it would be very challenging to do studies that distinguishes actual bias from social factors that tends to leave the bulk of parenting responsibilities to mothers.My own impression is that in Los Angeles County fathers in actual contested custody cases do quite well. But that’s impressionistic, nothing more. And of course any parent, father or mother, who gets a custody order in that parent’s own case that falls far short of what that parent thinks it should be, may want to blame the court. That blame can include a claim that the court was biased based on the sex of the parent even if bias doesn’t in fact explain the court’s decision in that parent’s case.

Short answer: Yes!Not only are surrogacy contracts respected, they are usually required before embryo transfer and injectable medications to prepare for transfer can legally take place.Every country has their on attitude and legislation toward commercial surrogacy. In some countries it is banned while others, like the United States, have varying laws depending on the state.Giving Tree Surrogacy California-based surrogacy agency and we typically work with gestational surrogates in California. Surrogacy laws are applied based on where the surrogate is located. California is considered the most surrogacy-friendly state, but certain steps must be followed for the arrangement to be considered legal.California surrogacy law was first established in 1993 in Calver v Johnson and again affirmed in 1998 in Buzzanca v Buzzanca. These cases established in cases of gestational surrogacy, intent governs in the determination of parentage. California Code, Family Code - FAM § 7960 gestational statute took effect in January 2013.This statute outlines:The meaning of intended parent - an individual, married or unmarried, who manifests the intent to be legally bound as the parent of a child resulting from assisted reproduction.Meaning of surrogate - a woman who bears and carries a child for another through medically assisted reproduction and pursuant to a written agreement.Gestational carrier - a woman who is not an intended parent and who agrees to gestate an embryo that is genetically unrelated to her pursuant to an assisted reproduction agreement.What an assisted reproduction agreement for gestational carriers shall contain:date on which the assisted reproduction agreement was executedthe person from which gametes originatedidentity of intended parentshow intended parents will cover medical costslegal representation by separate attorneys for intended parents and surrogatewhat actions will take place in the event of death, miscarriage, and a host of other medical issuesThe gestational carrier and intended parents will sign this agreement and have it notarized then filed with the courts. The agreement clearly states who the legal and “intended” parents, which effectively waives the rights a gestation carrier has to the embryo she is growing inside of her. To add further detail, parents can get a pre-birth order, which designates who the parents are (legal guardians) and allows for their names to be placed on the birth certificate and allow for legal handover once the baby is released from the hospital.The agreement MUST be completed, signed, and filed before the actual pregnancy can take place. There is a very clear process for how surrogacy progresses through each stage. Before transfer and confirmed heartbeat, the surrogate understands she has no legal right to the child by entering into this agreement.This is specific to California and other states have similar laws, but it is always best to consult a surrogacy professional in the state you wish to pursue surrogacy. Legal counsel is not maybe, it’s an absolute requirement.

Yes, but I have never seen the Hollywood version - sheet over head, shaking chains etc.My brother passed and came to spend time with me when I was in my teens. He told me to hold our mum’s hand at his funeral. Twelve years after my brother passed, I gave birth to my son. My dad was convinced this was my brother coming back to spend time with me and the family. My son and I are like brother and sister in many ways as I was so young when I had him. He was not “planned” BUT so very very wanted. I raised him as a single mum and although I deeply loved his dad, he was frightened so never properly involved. So I do suspect that maybe my dad was right.Onto the running into a ghost part.Many years after my son’s birth I could feel (my son’s father) energy around me after he died in 2016. I can only describe it as like when someone you love (in human form) is in the same room you know. You know when you’re on your own at home and when someone else is there. It felt like he was THERE. It was so weird, as I wasn’t used to it, but also nice.We all have a kind of aura, it’s as unique as a fingerprint, more so because others can recognise and sense it. I could smell him, and feel the intensity lovestruck teens feel of knowing he was in the same room - the kind that makes you physically blush and take breath. I blocked it out after a while, the intensity scared me.A couple of years pass and I feel him again. This time so strongly I can’t ignore it. By now, Brexit was happening in the UK. My son and I are Brits living in Europe and my son was super stressed about having his right to live and work in Europe taken away because of Brexit.For our son to continue to have the right to live and work in mainland Europe (we both live and work in Italy now) he needed an Irish passport (because Ireland is still in the EU, but England, where we are both from, is not). His late father (my ex boyfriend) was born in the UK but I seemed to vaguely recall he was perhaps Irish via his father and grandfather so I start to THINK maybe our son is eligible to apply for an Irish passport.This is a super important thing to have now Brexit has happened. If my son marries and has kids they can have Irish passports too and they can travel to all sorts of countries and live and work in Europe.However, because my ex was not there to physically ask, I had no idea what his father or grandfather’s names where, I have no idea where in Ireland they were born.I just had this vague memory that when we were teens, he’d once told me his dad had been Irish (his dad died when he was 4, so he never really spoke about him much).I started to feel him around me often and for some reason I just could NOT stop thinking about him.I hadn’t thought about him much for many, many years, so it was super odd.On a whim one day I start searching his surname and the county in the UK he grew up in on a super old local newspaper database. I’m looking at articles from the 50s that have been scanned in by someone and uploaded by someone, real old school, olden days stuff.Suddenly in a sea of old newspaper print a two line news article grabs my attention about a man being fined £20 in the local court circa 1960 for a minor driving offence.He has the same surname as my ex. Lived in the same county in the UK. It’d be like seeing a surname in the paper in California. I mean, it’s a huge place, with lots of people. Could be anyone, right?…In that instant I KNEW - it was like a blinding realisation - this had to have been his father.Then through a similar and very long and drawn out process of elimination I think I find who might have been the father’s father too.Their Irish family named all the first born sons John and they have an extremely common surname in Ireland. It would be like searching for a “John Smith” and having no relatives to hand to ask to help verify details - There was thousands of them.Somehow I was led to the exact RIGHT John in the exact RIGHT tiny village. The birth records aren’t online because they’re from before the 2nd and 1st world wars but I managed to confirm that the local church has a very old record of them both being born.Then I follow the breadcrumbs forward and backwards via details on the ex’s mum and dad’s marriage certificate, and the ex’s birth certificate. This involves ordering copies of everything and sending off for them and waiting to get the copies through the post.This was no easy process. Super long. It took months.I was talking to my sister about it one day on the phone and I said ‘It’s crazy I managed to track all this information down, it’s like < my ex > wanted me to find this out. He wanted to help < our son > . ’At this exact moment I feel an energy, a stroking, on the back of my neck. It was urging and confirming, ‘This is the truth.’The next HUGE hurdle is … to get my son his Irish passport, I needed to have his father added to my son’s birth certificate.I never did this at the time I went to register the birth twenty five years ago because in those days if you weren’t married the guy had to be present and on that exact day he was busy working a few hours drive away. I was super young. I didn’t realise the consequences. I’m also lazy and just never got around to updating the details, plus I didn’t even know you could.Back to late last year: I find out that even though my son’s father has now died, it’s possible to add him to my son’s brith certificate but I had no DNA samples for the UK court to check (and because he’s dead my son’s father can’t give a DNA sample).Multiple solicitors then advise me that no UK judge would allow me to do this. That I would lose if I took it to court.I apply and go to court anyway, get a sympathetic judge, I make a declaration of truth to the court (which effectively means if I was lying I could be in serious trouble for perjury) and the judge makes a post humous declaration of parentage re my son’s father.My ex is now added to my son’s birth certificate as his true father a whole 26 years after our son’s birth, and five years after my ex’s death. With no DNA sample. No letter from my son’s father acknowledging his parenthood.This is so rare in the UK that the judge tells us he’s never EVER presided over a similar case ever. He even had to take advice from other fellow judges on how to proceed.It’s now going to go on and set a precedent in the UK, making it easier if other adult children want their true fathers on their birth certificates - long after the father has actually died. Imagine the implications? Young men having the closure and reassurance that there’s no question mark over their parentage. Suddenly they have new relatives to meet, as well as the legal right to inherit, and, further, if there is a complicated family medical history these young people could legally access medical files they previously had no rights to see.Next, the judge writes to my ex’s only living relative to inform her of his ruling and his decision. My son and I had not spoken to her (my son’s paternal aunt) for many years.My son’s paternal aunt then writes us a lovely card expressing deep remorse for not being in touch for so long, and also saying her mum (my son’s paternal grandmother) longed to get in touch but was unsure and the longer she left it the more unsure she became. (The grandmother had died by now).This letter brings a whole new level of healing and closure to both me and my son. Just knowing they did care but never got in touch for many reasons really healed our hearts.It gave us closure, and, something I would never thought of doing myself has been corrected - there’s a public record now of who my son’s father was and he himself has that knowledge in black and white and signed off by a UK family court judge.This is a very weighty and serious - and we are told super mega rare - legal decision.He now has his Irish passport application underway and, this useful document is his birthright.I hope I have explained all of this properly.I guess you could look at all this with logic and say something like, I was pushing 50 and started to look back to my youth and decided to correct mistakes of the past. Like going off and adding my son’s father to his birth certificate a whole 25 years after his birth, five years after his father’s death, or applying to get my son his Irish passport. (He has a UK passport by the way, so never needed this Irish one until Brexit happened).BUT I didn’t know when I sat down and did some random googling of old newspaper archives that I COULD do all of this.I never ever thought about doing any of this, it was never ever on my to do list. I’m a disorganised hippy type. I have never been to court or been litigious. I avoid paperwork rather than hunting it down.I was drawn into every step of the process like a wave being pulled out to sea.Finding out the father and grandfather’s first names from recognising a surname in a very old newspaper article. Persuading a UK judge to make a ruling he has never once in his entire legal career ever been asked to make. Being able now to go off and get an Irish passport. The paternal aunt being informed and then being moved to reach out after years of silence. Old wounds healing. Historical records being corrected so they reflect who my son’s father was for the rest of time.These are all hugely important steps for my sons’ peace of mind and future. Was this his father reaching out from back home to nudge me into doing it? 100% YES. Is it contact with a ghost? 100% YES.I KNOW he helped me from back home. I KNOW he helped start the process of healing between me and his sister (his sister is grieving too, don’t forget, from her perspective how comforting would it be through all of that to suddenly be able to start speaking to your dead brother’s only son? her long-lost nephew and only living blood relative?).I KNOW he wanted there to be a public record that he was my son’s father. We three are all legally bound together for the rest of time. His own mistakes in life corrected as best they could be, and mine.It’s brought all of us closure but I would never have sat down and plotted out how to do all of this on my own. It’s all way too complicated and I definitely needed a project manager from the other side.All I can say is, don’t ever be afraid of ghosts. Listen to their messages and step by step a whole new world might open up to you and your loved ones, and theirs too.