Parentage

When parents are not married at the time of a child's birth, the law does not automatically recognize them as legal parents.

The legal parents must be determined in order to enforce parental rights and well as to enforce child support.

• Voluntary Acknowledgment: Parents can voluntarily establish legal parentage without going to court by filing documents at the office where the child's birth certificate was filed. OCSS can help with that.

• Court Filing: Parents can ask the Family Court to determine paternity or parentage. OCSS can help with that.

• Surrogacy Agreement: A surrogacy agreement can show the who the legal parents are that agreed to use assisted reproduction

The Automated Statewide Support Enforcement and Tracking System (ASSETS) continuously and automatically searches state and federal databases to locate an absent parent. 

You can help find and absent parent and get child support faster by giving us as much information as you can.

Try to provide the absent parent's:

• Full name
• Date of birth
• Social Security Number
• Current address (or old addresses where they used to live)
• Work history (the names of where they work now or where they worked before)