In the United States, if you push open the door of a drugstore, there is a good chance that you will find paternity tests on the shelves. Besides pregnancy tests, painkillers, cough syrups, osteoarthritis, migraine or diarrhea medication.

In the United Kingdom, the Boots pharmacy chain was the first to enter this market. Ready-to-use kits are sold there, as easy to use as a pregnancy test. The sample taken at home must be returned to the laboratory for analysis. And the results usually arrive 5 days later. In France ? It is strictly forbidden. Why ? What do these tests consist of? Are there legal alternatives? Response elements.

A paternity test consists of determining whether an individual is indeed the father of his son / daughter (or not). It is most often based on a DNA test: the DNA of the presumed father and the child are compared. This test is more than 99% reliable. More rarely, it is a comparative blood test that will provide the answer. A blood test allows in this case to determine the blood groups of the mother, father and child, to see if they match. For example, a man and a woman from group A cannot have children from group B or AB.

On this subject, France stands out from many other countries, especially Anglo-Saxons. More than the bonds of blood, our country chooses to privilege the bonds of the heart, created between a father and his child, even if the first is not the father.

Easy access to tests in pharmacies would allow many men to see that their child is in fact not theirs, and would likely blow up many families in the process.

Some studies estimate that between 7 and 10% of fathers are not biological fathers, and ignore it. If they found out? It could call into question bonds of love. And lead to divorce, depression, trial… This is why, until now, the realization of these tests remains strictly framed by the law. Only a dozen laboratories across the country have received approval allowing them to perform these tests, only within the framework of a judicial decision.

In France, it is imperative that a judicial decision be made to be able to carry out a paternity test. “It is only authorized in the context of legal proceedings aimed at:

• either to establish or contest a parentage link;
• either to receive or withdraw financial assistance called subsidies;
• or to establish the identity of deceased persons, as part of a police investigation, ”indicates the Ministry of Justice on the site service-public.fr.

If you want to apply for one, you will first need the door to a lawyer’s office. He can then in turn refer the matter to the judge with your request. There are many reasons for asking for it. It can be a question of removing the doubt about his paternity in the context of a divorce, of wanting a share of inheritance, etc.

Conversely, a child can request it to obtain subsidies from his presumed father. The latter’s consent is then required. But if he refuses to submit to the test, the judge can interpret this refusal as an admission of paternity.

Those who break the law face heavy penalties, up to a one-year prison sentence and / or a fine of € 15 (article 000-226 of the Penal Code).

So if you will not find a paternity test in pharmacies, it is not the same on the Internet. For the very simple reason that many of our neighbors allow these tests.

Search engines will scroll through an endless choice of sites if you type “paternity test”. A trivialization to which many give in. For a price often quite low – much less in any case than going through a court decision -, you send a little saliva taken from the inside of your cheek and that of your presumed child, and a few days or weeks later, you will receive the result in a confidential envelope.

Warning: with these laboratories not or little controlled, there is a risk of error. In addition, the result is given in a raw way, obviously without psychological support, which, according to some, is not without risks. Finding out that the child you have raised, sometimes for very long years, is not actually yours, can do a lot of harm and upset many lives in a snap. These tests do not have legal value in court. However, 10 to 000 tests would be ordered illegally on the Internet each year … against only 20 authorized, at the same time, by the courts.