What happens if I am legally married to someone and get pregnant with my new partner?
Anyone can be married to one person and get pregnant by a new person. However, the difficulty in the law arises in establishing your new partner’s paternity or parentage of their own biological child when you are married.
In Pennsylvania, a child born or conceived during the course of the marriage is presumed to be the child of the marriage which is called a Presumption of Paternity (Parentage). Therefore, if you are married to one person and have a child with another, your spouse will be considered the legal parent of your child.
Pennsylvania has enacted specific laws to deal with issues arising from paternity questions. The reason for the presumption is that Pennsylvania law preserves the functioning marital unit and precludes the presumed spouse from denying parentage when he or she has held the child out as their own. However, in instances were parties are separated or have obtained a decree in divorce; the presumption of paternity may be overcome in those situations. So if those facts do not exist in your case when you have a child with a new partner, you will need to retain an attorney experienced in paternity actions to ensure that you can rebut the presumption in order to establish parental rights to that child.
This issue will come front and center when you cannot put your new partner’s name on the child’s Birth Certificate. Therefore, in these instances it is best to be separated or divorced prior to birth of any child with a new partner.
heARTbeat is a publication of the KingSpry Adoption/ART Law Practice Group. It is meant to be informational and does not constitute legal advice.
