
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 9, 1993                   TAG: 9306090136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PATERNITY DECLARATIONS GET A BOOST

In many states, unwed fathers must go to court if they want to acknowledge their paternity. The Clinton administration wants to get them to sign up at the hospital, while they're still happy over the birth.

The plan could save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by increasing child-support payments from fathers, officials say.

There's no better place to establish the tie that binds a father to his child than at the hospital, said David Ellwood, assistant secretary of planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Everyone agrees that the hospital is the right place," he said. "The ultimate goal is to establish paternity for everybody in America. Every child has a right to know who their mother is and who their father is."

But only a handful of states make it easy for unwed fathers to legally acknowledge their paternity before the child leaves the maternity ward. Legislation pending before the Senate would expand in-hospital paternity programs nationwide.

The measure, tucked into President Clinton's controversial tax bill, would require all states to set up simple procedures for acknowledging paternity.

In 1990, a record 1.16 million children were born to unmarried women, and 4.4 million children under 18 were living with a never-married mother.

Washington state, which has an innovative hospital-paternity program, has found that about 80 percent of unwed fathers present at the birth of their child are willing to sign an affidavit of paternity, even though they know it could obligate them to pay child support.

In other states, an unwed father who wants to voluntarily add his name to his baby's birth certificate may have to sign the required documents at the courthouse, an attorney's office or a social services agency.

And if the courts are used to establish paternity, Washington state has found, the chances of tracking down the father grow slimmer as the baby grows older.

by CNB