When Paternity Tests show you are not the Father

Paternity testing can change someone’s life in an instant. Marcus Matthews, author of I Am Not the Father: Narratives of Men Falsely Accused of Paternity, hosts an open forum cleverly entitled ‘Sex, Dating and DNA: Discussion with Marcus L. Matthews’ at the University of Memphis, where he coordinates The Teen Appeal newspaper and is a part of the student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. The purpose is discuss his story of paternity testing.

Marcus’s story

Matthews underwent a paternity test when he thought he could have fathered a child at the age of 17. The paternity test showed that he was not the biological father of the child. The mother died at a very young age, when the child was only 4 months old. One month after her passing, Matthews received the paternity test results that indicated the child was not his biological daughter.

Now at the age of 30 Matthews wrote his book hoping to get his paternity test encounter out to the world and help prevent others from having to go through the same painful experience. He is also working on a documentary about what he went through at such a young age and how this has affected his life. Filming for his documentary about false paternity and paternity fraud begins with the open discussion at the University of Memphis scheduled for tonight, March 2, 2011.