Court Opinion

ID: 9757150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:20:44.438174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:35.335898
License: Public Domain

*1057HUDOCK, J.,
dissenting:
¶ 1 Respectfully, I dissent. The majority correctly concludes that under Pennsylvania law Appellant’s husband would be estopped from denying parentage of the twins at issue here. In Pennsylvania, under these circumstances, genetic testing would not have been ordered. However, since the Appellant and her husband resided in New Jersey, New Jersey granted husband’s request for genetic testing, which excluded husband as the biological father of the twins. I disagree with the majority that Appellant should also be precluded from pursuing the Appellee as the father of the children.
¶ 2 In Brinkley v. King, 549 Pa. 241, 701 A.2d 176 (1997), our Supreme Court discussed the underlying rationale for the estoppel doctrine.
Estoppel is based on the public policy that children should be secure in knowing who their parents are. If a certain person has acted as the parent and bonded with the child, the child should not be required to suffer the potentially damaging trauma that may come from being told that the father he has known all his life is not in fact his father.
Brinkley, 549 Pa. at 249-50, 701 A.2d at 180.
¶ 3 Since the action of the New Jersey court has destroyed any father/child relationship with these children, the children are not secure in knowing who their parents are, and the public policy considerations underpinning the doctrine of es-toppel are not existent. The doctrine of paternity by estoppel is not designed to protect the real father from shouldering his financial responsibility to his children. The result of the majority opinion in this case exemplifies the danger envisioned by Justice Nigro in his dissenting opinion in Fish v. Behers, 559 Pa. 523, 741 A.2d 721 (1999), where he stated:
This situation is a perfect example of why I believe that our courts should abandon the strict application of the es-toppel doctrine and grant trial courts the discretion to order paternity blood tests and then consider such evidence along with other factors relevant to the best interests of the child involved. Such an approach would ... prevent biological fathers from using the estop-pel doctrine as a vehicle for insulating themselves from parental responsibilities ...
Id., 559 Pa. at 531, 741 A.2d at 725.
¶ 4 Under the circumstances of this case, I believe genetic testing should have been allowed and, accordingly, I dissent.