The duration required for establishing parentage through scientific means varies. The timeline depends on several factors, including the testing method employed, the laboratory’s workload, and the promptness with which samples are submitted and processed. This process definitively determines biological relationships.
Accurate and timely results are crucial for legal, emotional, and medical reasons. Establishing the biological father of a child can impact inheritance rights, child support obligations, and medical history knowledge. Historically, determining parentage was based on physical resemblance and circumstantial evidence, methods far less reliable than modern DNA analysis.