Subsection (d) gives protection to third parties who may claim benefit of an earlier determination of parentage.

Finally, the section is silent on whether state IV-D agencies are bound by prior determinations of parentage. This controversial issue is left to other state law. Similarly, issues of collateral attack on final judgments are to be resolved by recourse to other state law, as in civil proceedings generally.

Maine Comment

This section is gender neutral consistent with other Maine amendments to the UPA.

SUBCHAPTER 7

CHILD OF ASSISTED REPRODUCTION

Comment

During the last thirty years, medical science has developed a wide array of assisted reproductive technology, often referred to as ART, which have enabled childless individuals and couples to become parents. Thousands of children are born in the United States each year as the result of ART. If a married couple uses their own eggs and sperm to conceive a child born to the wife, the parentage of the child is straightforward. The wife is the mother--by gestation and genetics, the husband is the father--by genetics and presumption. And, insofar as the Uniform Parentage Act is concerned, neither parent fits the definition of a "donor."

Current state laws and practices are not so straightforward, however. If a woman gives birth to a child conceived using sperm from a man other than her husband, she is the mother and her husband, if any, is the presumed father. However, the man who provided the sperm might assert his biological paternity, or the husband might seek to rebut the martial presumption of paternity by proving through genetic testing that he is not the genetic father. As was the case in UPA (1973), it is necessary for the new Act to clarify definitively the parentage of a child born under these circumstances.