What happens when a female litigant going through a divorce in Texas is pregnant? This question has been much talked about in the legal community with the recent revelation that Kim Kardashian is pregnant with Kanye West’s child, even though she is still legally married to Kris Humphries.
If a Husband and Wife are going through a divorce in Texas and the Wife is pregnant, it is highly unlikely that a Judge will grant a divorce before the child is born, regardless of the child’s paternity. If the unborn child is the Husband’s biological child and there is no dispute about the paternity of the child, a Judge will not grant a divorce until after that unborn child is born.
What does a woman do if she finds herself in Kim Kardashian’s situation? There is no dispute the unborn child is Kanye West’s and not the child of her current Husband, Kris Humphries. In Texas, Kim would need to have Kanye sign what is called an Acknowledgment of Paternity. When two people are married and a woman is pregnant, there is a legal presumption that the unborn child is the Husband’s biological child. However, if the unborn child is not the Husband’s biological child, the child’s biological father will need to sign an Acknowledgment of Paternity so that the Husband is not legally the child’s conservator. An Acknowledgment of Paternity is a legal sworn document executed by the biological father, filed with the Court and the Bureau of Vital Statistics, and states under oath that a man other than the Husband is the biological father of the unborn child.
Even if the biological father who is not the Husband signs the Acknowledgement of Paternity, whether a Husband and Wife may be divorced prior to the child’s birth is entirely left to the discretion of the Judge. If Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries were going through a divorce in Texas, a Judge would likely not allow the divorce to take place prior to the birth of the unborn child. Therefore, the Kardashian/Humphries divorce proceedings which have already lasted over ten times longer than the actual marriage, will likely continue well into 2013.
