Conflict between the Rule of Marital Paternity Presumption and DNA Test

In Iranian civil law, as a result of Islamic jurisprudence, in order to determine the relationship between father and offspring, reliance upon the rule of marital paternity presumption is accepted. Based on this rule, a child who is born during marriage is considered the husband’s offspring, provided that no less than six months and no more than ten months have passed from the date of sexual intercourse to that of birth. If, despite the existence of the above conditions, a husband should claim that the child born to the couple does not belong to him, and in order to prove his claim, he relies upon a DNA test and the results of this test indicate that the child is not attributed to him, the situation of the born child is doubted in terms of attribution. In order to clarify the issue in question, the traditional theory considers rejection of the DNA test more compatible with the reasons for legislating the aforementioned rule and preservation of the foundations of the family. This is so while the need to pay attention to human knowledge which helps the judge discern the truth has made it advisable to pay attention to the results of these types of tests. In fact, the said rule is considered as a presumption due only to lack of knowledge, and therefore, it can hardly be maintained that if there is a scientific method through which the relationship between father and child can be determined with a high degree of certainty, one should still resort to a method that discerns the reality only through conjecture.