Maine Comment

Section 1844 is made gender neutral and preserves, for example, a child's ties to the presumed parent who for the first two years of the child's life openly held the child out as that person's own child regardless of whether that person is in fact a genetic parent.

SUBCHAPTER 3

VOLUNTARY ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PATERNITY

Comment

Voluntary acknowledgment of paternity has long been an alternative to a contested paternity suit. Under UPA (1973) § 4, the inclusion of a man's name on the child's birth certificate created a presumption of paternity, which could be rebutted. In order to improve the collection of child support, especially from unwed fathers, the U.S. Congress mandated a fundamental change in the acknowledgment procedure. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA, also known as the Welfare Reform Act) conditions receipt of federal child support enforcement funds on state enactment of laws that greatly strengthen the effect of a man's voluntary acknowledgment of paternity, 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(5)(C). This statute is reproduced in Appendix: Federal IV-D Statute Relating to Parentage, infra. In brief, it provides that a valid, unrescinded, unchallenged acknowledgment of paternity is to be treated as equivalent to a judicial determination of paternity.

Because in many respects the federal act is nonspecific, the new UPA contains clear and comprehensive procedures to comply with the federal mandate. Primary among the factual circumstances that Congress did not take into account was that a married woman