Paternity Acknowledgement Form Georgia: Fill & Download for Free

Paternity Law Regarding Baby's Surname in Georgia (bolding for emphasis is mine)“Baby Last Name Laws in GeorgiaGeorgia laws, like those of many states, presume that a baby born to a married woman is the child of the woman's husband. You might think that Georgia would also require that the husband's surname be used for the baby on the birth certificate, but this is not the case. In Georgia, if the mother of the baby is married, she gets to select the first, middle and last names for the child.However, if the mother is unmarried, the options for the last name of the baby depend on whether paternity has been acknowledged by the baby's father. If the father has completed an acknowledgement of paternity form, the parents of the baby can select any first, middle and last name they desire for the child. The last name need not be his no hers, but can be either. It can also be a hyphenated name or just a last name they happen to like.What about an out-of-wedlock birth where no paternity acknowledgment is completed? This is the only circumstance where the state of Georgia mandates the child's last name. Under Georgia law, the baby's last name on the birth certificate must be the mother's last name.”

Legitimation is a way for a father to claim the legal parentage of a child “born out of wedlock.” It goes beyond a mere acknowledgment of paternity. In Georgia, establishing paternity gives a court the power to enforce a father’s duty to support a child financially, while legitimation gives a child the right to inherit from a father, as well as the right to obtain family medical history on the father’s side, and the right to placement in the home of a relative on the father’s side in the event that the mother becomes unable to care for the child. Legitimation also gives the father the right to inherit from the child and the right to petition the court for custody or visitation. Without legitimation, only the mother of a child born out of wedlock has any custody rights.http://crystalwrightlaw.com/legitimation/

It’s hard to pinpoint the actual date, but the idea of “benevolent slavery” was a major part of the Southern defense against abolitionists. Slavery apologists promoted the idea that slavery was not merely a necessary evil, but a form of paternalism that was good for both blacks and whites. But the rise in popularity of the idea of “benevolent slaveholders” coincided with the rise of the myth of the Lost Cause. The essence of that idea began the day after the war was over, when in his farewell address Robert E. Lee stated:After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.Notice how Lee said “compelled” and refused to acknowledge he had been defeated by a simply better army — instead, he spoke about how the reason that the Confederate army was defeated was that they had been trounced by “numbers and resources.” He went on in the speech to refer to his soldiers as “brave survivors” of “hard-fought battles” who stayed “steadfast to the last.” He spoke that his soldiers should take “satisfaction” from a “duty faithfully performed.” Lee and his lieutenant, Colonel Marshall, essentially refused to renounce the official Confederate state propaganda that whipped its soldiers into a frenzy over the fear that the North was attempting to “subjugate” and exterminate the South.(Lee’s farewell address, 1865)The idea Lee pushed, however, gained rapid popularity amongst Southerners. A major event in the proliferation of the Lost Cause was actually done by Southern women. They pushed to rebury their husbands, fathers, and brothers amongst the Confederate dead, dismissing resistance by saying that they were merely women (and therefore could not be political). To be sure, this was a very political act — it argued that Confederate soldiers be treated as merely apolitical soldiers, and not traitors to the Union.Former Confederate politicians latched on to the growing cause, and in 1868 Alexander Stephens, former Vice President of the Confederacy, wrote a book called A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States. In the book, Stephens argues in favor of the concept of “states’ rights” and states that slavery was merely a minor concern. Never mind that just seven years earlier, Stephens had forcefully spoken:Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.(Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy and later Governor of Georgia)It was really in the late 1870s and 1880s, however, that the concept of “benevolent slavery” become widespread. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the United States government failed to properly impose Reconstruction and “de-Nazify” Confederate society. Although institutions like the Freedman Bureau were set up and African-Americans became actual federal politicians (!), Confederate veterans coalesced into the Ku Klux Klan to attack African-Americans. The Republicans abandoned Reconstruction permanently in 1876 to secure the Presidency, in turn leaving the newly-emancipated slaves to suffer at the hands of the neo-Confederate governments of the South.The widespread poverty and lack of education that afflicted these former freedman would be used as justification for the Confederate cause and therefore for the idea that slavery was beneficial; after all, African-Americans “abandoned “ to freedom had become “uncivilized” and demonstrated their inferiority (never mind that affluent African-American communities were terrorized by these neo-Confederates and blacks relegated to secondary status).The manifesto of Confederate apologism, however, became Edward Pollard’s books The Lost Cause and the Lost Cause Regained. I call it them manifestos because Confederate apologism was, and is, an ideology. It is not merely some innocent belief about “Constitutional interpretation” but a vicious and terrible cult, integral to which is the subjugation of non-whites. Confederate apologists in the late 19th century imposed the concept of ideological purity savagely, attacking Confederate generals like James Longstreet who in their minds committed apostasy because he allied with the Republican Party.Indeed; the Old South became man’s lost paradise, a Garden of Eden, which those evil Yankees had destroyed. Organizations like the Daughters of the Confederacy and Confederate Memorial Literary Society were founded by descendants of Confederate veterans, and held regular celebrations of the traditions of the Antebellum South. Ex-Confederates and their children glorified the common soldier as a hardworking, self-sacrificing, and God-fearing man. Life on the plantation was heavily romanticized through literature and other forms. And the Old South became venerated as a utopia, where aristocratic men danced with pretty Southern belles in elaborate balls, while devoted slaves were attended to their masters and were well-treated by the rest of the family.As the start of the 20th century came about, the intensity with which the Lost Cause was portrayed increased rapidly. Confederate veterans had begun to die off, and there was a major push to remember them. The focus of the Lost Cause actually shifted from mourning over the death of the Old South towards celebration of its institutions. This was eagerly promoted by the memoirs of generals like John Brown Gordon and Jubal Early, whose books in my opinion really changed the narrative of slavery greatly. Gordon presented his slaves as dutiful and loyal, and depicted the pre-war South as a place where blacks and whites collectively understood who was on top and who wasn’t. Never mind that Gordon, and men like Gordon, cheered for an institution that promoted things like this:No; it was only in Reconstruction according to Gordon that those evil Yankee carpetbaggers manipulated those stupid, uneducated blacks into turning against their masters. He made arguments commonly used by neo-Confederates to justify their devotion towards a place long-gone, like the “slavery existed everywhere” reasoning. Gordon went on to insist that the only reason Northerners abolished slavery was because of the region’s climate (and definitely not because of any religious or philosophical grounds, right?). Early argued similar things, insisting slavery in the South was a result of geography and that the war wasn’t really about slavery — according to him, Union leaders simply used it as a catchword to “arouse the frenzies of a mob.”As the focus of the Cause shifted to celebration, Confederate heritage organizations patronized the construction of numerous statues. This was eagerly encouraged by Southern politicians, who hoped to score brownie points with Southern whites. Generals like Jackson, Staurt, Forrest, Beauregard, and finally Lee were built across the ex-Confederate statues. Lee in particular was depicted as the Messiah and hero of the new narrative, a noble and brave leader, who was never outgeneralled (never mind that despite Lee’s victories in the East, the Confederacy was being thrashed in the west). Take this statue, for instance:(Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia)This statue is the quintessential symbol of Lee veneration, which was critical to the Lost Cause. Lee was depicted as a great man and a “nonpartisan” man (never mind that he was a prolific slaveowner who, contrary to popular belief, was actively involved in the proliferation of the Lost Cause in the post-war period). Southerners like him were supposedly ultra-benevolent and totally apolitical men. They became romanticized as honorable and good people of great pedigree and unquestionable intelligence, who were merely committed to those celebrated “states’ rights” that Jefferson and Madison had so vigorously championed.And this narrative unfortunately continued. Woodrow Wilson, who held the Presidency from 1913 until 1921, was an avid believer of the Lost Cause and a supporter of neo-Confederate ideology. Ex-Confederate veterans were paraded in his White House and Wilson spoke that the valor demonstrated by Confederate soldiers made “one proud to have been sprung of a race that could produce such bravery and constancy.” He proudly showed the The Birth of a Nation, a white supremacist film which ennobled slavery and portrayed slaves as uneducated, violent, immoral, and inferior. The idea of a benevolent slaveowner further penetrated media, and movies like Gone with the Wind further played up the idea that African-Americans were dullwitted and that the Antebellum South was a place where noble slaveowners benevolently treated their slaves.As the Civil Rights movement arose, the narrative began to change. Schools started changing their textbooks and discarded the myth, and criticism was greatly directed to the celebration of the 100th anniversary of secession. Nonetheless, an unfortunate side effect was the adoption of the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (the army that Lee commanded) as a symbol of the Confederate cause.There is a quote by C. Vann Woodward which, in my opinion, demonstrates the essence of the Lost Cause myth and why it was adopted. Woodward wrote:“One of the most significant inventions of the New South was the Old South … oftener than not this archaic romanticism, this idealizing of the past, proceeded from the mouths of the most active propagandists for the New Order."And ultimately, that is what that myth is. It’s an idealization of the past, pushed in order to make ex-Confederates feel better about the fact that they lost.