The UAE Federal Supreme Court has rejected a woman’s lawsuit seeking to establish a man’s paternity of her child despite genetic evidence. The court ruled that the legal conditions for establishing parentage had not been met and that DNA test results alone were insufficient to uphold the mother’s claim.

The woman said in her lawsuit that the child was born from a secret relationship with the defendant. As he had refused to acknowledge paternity, the child was registered solely under the mother’s name. She sought legal recognition of parentage, maintenance payments, childcare support and the official registration of the paternal relationship.

The Court of First Instance ruled in the mother’s favour, and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision. The rulings were based on a forensic laboratory report in a related criminal case, which did not exclude the two parties as the child’s biological parents. The man challenged the judgment, taking the case to the Federal Supreme Court.

According to Emarat Al Youm, the Supreme Court said there was no evidence of a valid marriage or any other basis under Sharia that would justify attributing the child’s parentage to the man. The court also cited the criminal convictions of both parties in connection with the relationship, as well as official documents showing that the woman was married to another man.

The woman submitted a document attributed to a law firm indicating that she had been divorced, but the court deemed it insufficient. It found that the document was dated after the incident at the centre of the dispute and could not replace an official divorce registration.

Article 90 of the Personal Status Law, enacted under Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2024, provides for DNA testing in specific cases, including disputes over a child’s parentage. It allows judgments based on test results only when certain conditions are met, including that the child’s parentage is unknown and that the age difference is consistent with a parent-child relationship.

The Supreme Court found that the Court of Appeal had given the DNA test results greater weight than permitted by law. It therefore overturned the appeal ruling, set aside the first-instance judgment establishing parentage and dismissed the mother’s lawsuit.