The Real Deal With Home Paternity Testing
Laboratory paternity tests usually range from $150 to as much as $1,000. On the average, a putative father is said to spend as $450 to $600 on paternity tests. Some find these very expensive which is why there are fathers who are settling for home DNA test kits which usually cost around$30 to $89. But are these tests credible?
Just like laboratory tests, home DNA testing kits determine if a person is the biological father through genetic samples. Kits would have instructions and equipment needed to collect the DNA samples. A cheek swab is used to get the sample and it is sent to the lab, properly labelled. The results will be sent to you in more or less a week after sending the samples. Aside from the father and the child, the mother is also swabbed for samples. This is establish a stronger connection.
Although they are less than a hundred dollars (or more) than laboratory tests, not everybody is suited to for a home DNA test. Those who will be using the DNA results in court and legal proceedings should get laboratory DNA testing instead of the home-test. In legal paternity tests, the court seeks to establish that the DNA samples are monitored to avoid tampering or testing by a biased party.
Home paternity tests are usually performed outside of legal requirements. They are easy to acquire since convenience stores and online shops are selling these kits. Once you send the results to the laboratory to analyze, they are bound to keep the results confidential.
In fact, to protect their clients privacy, home paternity DNA laboratories, provide options on how clients would be informed of the results. Some would allow you to access the paternity rest results online by using a provided username and password. Some prefer receiving it through phone, the message has its password enabled too. Or you could receive the results through mail.
Some would prefer home paternity testing before they proceed to legal action or legal paternity testing. This is to avoid any complicated situations in the family. Others take home paternity testing just to satisfy their need to know the truth or satisfy curiosity. Home paternity testing is also ideal if you want to have a discreet and private test involving few punitive fathers.
When purchasing home DNA test kit, make sure that the laboratory performing the test is accredited by the AABB (American Association of Blood Banks) and is ISO17025 certified. Aside from that, it is better to get a home test kit from a laboratory that offers customer and technical support during the entire process. Support representatives would be able to assist you with any kind of issue you may encounter while testing.
Recently, with the popularity of home DNA paternity test in the market, experts are already questioning the morality and success rate of these tests. There are some home kits that cost as low as $19 which raise doubts on their accuracy. However, for some fathers and relatives, it is more important to know the truth and they could learn about it for less than a hundred dollars.