If you don’t know for sure who the father of your child is, but you don’t want to go to a clinic to find out, you can get an at-home paternity test. There are a few things you should know about these tests.
The price of an at home paternity test can be as low as $30, while you might expect to spend nearly $1,000 if you visit the laboratory to have the test done. However, while price is a large issue, so is accuracy.
With an at home paternity test, you’ll take the samples yourself. Usually, this consists of swabbing the inside of the child’s cheek, the potential father’s cheek and the mother’s cheek with separate swabs. The samples are then placed into a sterile container and sent back to the lab. The same tests are done on the samples with these at home tests as the clinics and labs that cost more.
One thing you should know about at-home paternity tests are they’re not usually legal in a court of law. While many labs are creating tests that are designed to stand up in a court of law, most of the time the court orders a DNA test from an actual laboratory or clinic. However, if you just want to do the test for curiosity’s sake and not for child support or custody issues, the at-home tests will work just fine. You’ll also end up spending hundreds of dollars less for the at-home type of test.
