Imagine having a kid that you know is yours, that you've spent time with and become attached to, and that a DNA test proved is yours. (you're a guy, obviously, in this scenario, because usually we womenfolk pretty much know when a baby we're caring for is genetically ours).
The kid you fathered and developed a bond with, though, is the product of an affair with a married woman, who stayed with her military-man husband. And that guy, who was away at an Air Force base during your relationship with his wife, gets to be the legal father of your child.
That's the situation faced by James Rhoades of Tallahassee, Fla. The Supreme Court of Kentucky (where the boy's mother and her husband now live) ruled 4-3 last month that Rhoades could not press his paternity claim despite DNA evidence.
The reason is a centuries-old legal precedent called the "marital presumption" which holds that if a woman is married when she gives birth, that man is presumed to be the father of the child even if all parties involved know otherwise.
Which made sense centuries ago, before we understood anything about genetics much less DNA. Now, though, when establishing paternity is as simple as swabbing a cheek, is it really right to keep this child's real father, who is eager to continue a relationship with him, out off his life? Or, conversely, to force men who are already dealing with the fallout from a cheating spouse to be financially responsible for a child that is not theirs because they were married to the child's mother?
"... We are in need of a bold declaration that the marriage circle, even one with an errant partner, will be invaded at one's own legal risk," Justice Bill Cunningham was by quoted Time as writing in his judicial opinion.
GAH. I'm pro-marriage, for EVERYBODY that wants it, but that's just — wow. When at least two of the three people involved showed no respect for the institution, why in heaven's name should the law? Especially when a boy's right to know the truth of his life is being trampled.  And a father is left, as the Time article describes him, "devastated."

Image: TIME