Mulligan v. Corbett: The Court’s Power to Decide When Your Child Is Not Yours to Keep

Lisa M. Piccinini

In Mulligan v. Corbett, the Court of Appeals of Maryland addressed the issue of whether a man claiming to be the biological father of a child conceived during a wedded woman's separation from her husband could require the child to undergo DNA testing. Although the child was born after the divorce was finalized, the exhusband, Thomas Mulligan, agreed to act as the child's father and bring her into his household. The court held that William Corbett, the man that claimed to be the child's biological father, must rebut the child's presumed legitimacy before using the Family Law Article to establish paternity. In applying that standard, the court concluded that Corbett's paternity claim did not overcome that presumption. Thus, Corbett had to use the more difficult standard in the Estates and Trusts Article to establish his biological link to the child.

The court correctly recognized that a child is presumed legitimate when conceived during marriage or when a man has established paternity by way of the legitimization section of the Estates and Trusts Article. The court, however, incorrectly interpreted that presumption as barring other men claiming paternity from bringing suit under the Family Law Article. At minimum, the court should have allowed Corbett to challenge the child's paternity under the Family Law Article, ordering blood testing upon a showing of reasonable evidence that he was the child's father. Ideally, instead of requiring a man to overcome the child's presumed legitimacy, the court should have allowed the presumption of legitimacy to stand unless and until it was re-established in another man.