Utah High Court Sides with Child's Biological Father

By Daniel Hawn

Published on March 19, 2008

The court's decision came in a case involving a married woman who bore a child out of wedlock. According to court documents, after the child was born, the woman's husband agreed to become the legal father of the child.

Nine months later, however, the couple divorced, and the child's biological father attempted to assert parental rights over the child. The biological father and the child's mother married six months later.

During the first 13 months of the child's life, the biological father visited the child on only three occasions, court records show.

The biological father was eventually denied legal fatherhood of the child by a 3rd District Court Commissioner. The commissioner's decision was appealed and later reversed by a district court judge.

The child's legal father appealed the case to the Utah Court of Appeals, which ultimately overturned the district judge's ruling, saying that allowing the natural father to claim paternal rights would prove too disruptive to the child's life.

This week's ruling by the state Supreme Court affirmed the appeals court's decision. The justices held that since the child's legal father had assumed a parental role, any challenge to that status would interfere with the child's well-being.

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