Legal Question in Family Law in California

The birth certificate does not matter. What matters is whether you have legal determination of paternity. This can happen in three ways: 1. being married to and cohabitating with the mother at conception; 2. mother and father signing a voluntary declaration of paternity form in the hospital, or signing it later and filing it properly; or 3. having a court determination of paternity. If you do not have paternity established by one of those three methods, you have to start by filing a petition to establish paternity. In that proceeding you can obtain temporary orders preventing removal of the child from the state. You will then have to convince the court a) that you are the father (modern cheek swab DNA testing makes this easy to prove or disprove), and that it is in the best interests of the child not to move away. If you already have established legal paternity, then you need to file a proceeding to establish custody orders. In that proceeding you can again obtain a temporary order against the child leaving the state. You then still have to prove that it is not in the best interests of the child to move.

Although you legally have the right to represent yourself in these proceedings, I strongly recommend against it. If the other party does not have an attorney, you may be able to get by with a limited scope representation where an attorney advises you, but does not take over the case for you. If she has an attorney or gets one, you are almost certain to lose unless you hire an attorney to represent you. I offer representation of both types, and would be happy to meet with you for an initial consultation in my Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill office.