Paternity Registry in Washington State

Paternity Registry in Washington State

Paternity registries are created for two reasons. One being to help people who are interested to identify a putative father by submitting a request for a search to be conducted on the Registry. Another is to determine identity and location of putative father when an adoption petition has been filed to give notice of such adoption to the father (1). A putative father is someone who is generally considered to be the father.

Washington state currently does not have a Paternity Registry system. Although a bill has been presented to the Juvenile Justice and Family Law Committee that is trying to “establish a paternity registry through the Registrar of Vital Statistics” (2). This bill would also allow all rights of the father to be terminated with out notice if they did not register timely or is exempt from registering (1).This of course is only if the alleged father is not recognized by law to be the child’s father. The bill, House Bill 2788, had it’s first reading on January 13th, 2006 and as of February 10th, 2008 nothing more has happened with it (3).

There are 28 U.S states with a paternity registration system, although the laws behind some of them differ between states. Certain states like Arizona and Minnesota “regards a putative father’s ignorance of the pregnancy or the birth as no excuse for not registering with the putative father registry” (4). Some states are “hostile” with their registry laws and are “truly meant to eliminate the father mom doesn’t want”, like Florida and Utah (4). A few states have really tight timely registry rules while others to not lead to paternity establishment.

This information was a little bit hard to find at first but once I started paying attention to actual Washington State Legislation I began to find some answers. I mainly used online sources because now-a-days most Law resources online in PDF format. First