In an era of quick, cheap and readily available genetic heredity testing, the Family Courts are increasingly asked to determine legal parentage in light of DNA evidence. For the children involved, that can mean that their genetic bodily fragments are used to retrospectively ‘correct’ their legal kinship relationships and legal identity. Where genetic paternity has been misattributed, judges have erased children’s legal connections with misattributed fathers (and their kin) from birth certificates irrespective of any social and relational meaning that these relationships and identities may have accumulated. This article critiques the genetic thinking apparent in family law judgments on legal parentage. It draws on theories of embodiment to argue that judges use a rhetoric of ‘biotruth’ to engage with the child’s body only as genetic fragments. In reconstructing children’s ‘true’ legal parentage and identity from their genetic fragments, law disembodies children themselves, relating to them as evidence of a reproductive transaction in which men who did not get the genetic child they bargained for may be able to obtain a refund of child support paid. In doing so, the current model of legal parentage fails to engage with the children involved in these disputes as embodied and relational legal persons.

在一个快速，廉价且容易获得的遗传遗传测试时代，越来越多地要求家事法庭根据DNA证据确定合法的父母身份。对于所涉儿童，这可能意味着他们的遗传身体片段被用于追溯“纠正”他们的法律亲属关系和法律身份。在遗传亲权被错误分配的地方，法官从出生证中删除了孩子与错误分配的父亲（及其亲戚）的法律联系，而不论这些关系和身份可能已经积累的任何社会和关系含义。本文对家庭法关于合法父母的判决中显而易见的遗传思维进行了批判。它利用体现的理论来论证法官使用“生物真相”的修辞仅以遗传片段的形式与孩子的身体接触。在从子女的基因片段中重建子女的“真实”合法父母身份和身份时，法律将子女本身具体化，与子女有关，作为生殖交易的证据，在这种交易中，没有得到他们讨价还价的遗传子女的男子可能能够获得退款。支付子女抚养费。在这种情况下，当前的合法父母身份模式无法与作为具体和亲属法人参与这些争端的儿童进行互动。