Judge can’t require possible siblings to provide DNA samples
A recent Michigan case sheds some light on how far a court may be willing to go in order to accommodate someone who claims they’re a long-lost relative entitled to a share of a deceased person’s estate.
In that case, a man named Terry Seybert died in 2019 without a will and his body was cremated. After Seybert’s mother died, his adult daughter Shannon Marie Parker was named personal representative of his estate.
Not long afterward, a man named Aaron Wise entered the picture and demanded a halt to Parker’s distribution of Seybert’s assets, claiming he was Seybert’s biological son.
According to Wise, he, along with Seybert’s mother and brother, had provided DNA samples that indicated a 99-percent probability that he was related to Seybert.
The probate court told Parker not to make any distributions from the estate until the court could determine whether Wise was an heir. Wise then requested that the court require Parker to submit to genetic testing herself so he could show that Seybert was his father. Wise’s reasoning was that Seybert had been cremated, leaving no genetic material behind, and that while genetic testing from Seybert’s mother and brother may have shown a biological relationship, it didn’t show he was Seybert’s son.
The court agreed and issued the order.
But Parker appealed, and the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed.
Specifically, the court pointed out that Michigan’s paternity law does not explicitly allow a judge to order anyone other than a mother, child and alleged father to provide genetic samples when determining a person’s paternity. While the law doesn’t explicitly prohibit a court from ordering a potential father’s other children from submitting to genetic testing, the court was unwilling to read such a requirement into the law.
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