Even if proven by evidence, biological reality must be erased in the face of existing legal parentage, where the applicant has not acted within the legal time limits. This is what the Court of Cassation has just recalled in its judgment of 7 November 2018.
A woman's birth certificate indicates that she is a legitimate child born to a married couple. In her lifetime, she learns that her father is a man other than her mother's husband. Neither the mother nor the child shall institute legal proceedings within the legal time limits in order to have this biological truth recognized. On the death of the supposedly biological father, when there is a will recognizing her, the woman decides to take legal action.
Although scientific techniques enable a person to discover his biological origin throughout his life, the Court of Cassation dismissed that woman's appeal and thereby confirmed the Court of Appeal's reply by finding that she had been too late to claim the establishment of her biological paternal filiation. It did not act within 10 years of its majority, nor did it act when the law still allowed it, within 10 years of the establishment of a paternity test.
