Filiation (nasab) is among the most important rights the law is keen to safeguard, owing to its fundamental effects touching the child's identity and his rights to maintenance, inheritance, custody, and care. The UAE legislator has given the question of establishing filiation special attention in the new Personal Status Law: it has defined the methods of its proof and their conditions, regulated the cases in which scientific methods such as DNA testing are resorted to, and set out the cases in which a claim to deny filiation is not heard, along with the sole route for its denial. Understanding these provisions protects the rights of the child and the family and spares the parties from disputes that may be prolonged.

How Is Filiation (Nasab) Established Under UAE Personal Status Law?

First: Methods of Establishing Filiation

The law has clearly defined the methods of establishing a child's filiation to his father and to his mother. A child's filiation to his father is established by birth within a marriage contract, by acknowledgment, by evidence, or by scientific methods. As for a child's filiation to his mother, it is established by proof of birth.

Second: Establishing Filiation During an Existing Marriage and the Duration of Pregnancy

The law has linked the establishment of filiation during marriage to the duration of pregnancy, setting the minimum duration of pregnancy at one hundred and eighty days and the maximum at three hundred and sixty-five days, unless a medical committee formed for this purpose decides otherwise.

Accordingly, a child's filiation to his father is established if he is born during the existence of the marriage contract after the expiry of the minimum duration of pregnancy from the date of the contract, or after the contract's termination before the expiry of the maximum duration of pregnancy — unless it is established that meeting between the spouses was impossible.

Third: Conditions for Establishing Filiation by Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment of paternity is a method of establishing filiation, even if made during a death-illness, but it is subject to precise conditions for it to take effect:

Fourth: Establishing Filiation Through DNA Testing

The law has permitted the court, in specific cases, to order a DNA test in accordance with the legislation in force, and to rule in line with the result the test reaches. These cases include:

Fifth: Establishing Filiation by the Wife's Acknowledgment

If the acknowledger is a married woman or a woman in her waiting period, the child's filiation to her husband is established only in one of two situations: that the husband acknowledges the filiation under the conditions prescribed for acknowledgment of paternity, or that evidence establishes that the birth took place within a valid, irregular, or void marriage contract.

Sixth: When Is a Claim to Deny Filiation Not Heard?

In the interest of the stability of filiation and the protection of the child, the law has provided that if filiation is established in accordance with the recognized methods of proof — birth within a marriage contract, acknowledgment with its conditions, DNA testing, and the wife's acknowledgment — then no claim to deny it shall thereafter be heard.

Seventh: Denial of a Child's Filiation by Liʿan

The law has made liʿan (mutual imprecation) the sole route by which the husband may deny a child's filiation to him, and this may take place only where two conditions are met together:

Eighth: Hearing the Liʿan Claim and Its Effects

The law has regulated how a liʿan claim is heard and its consequences as follows: if a liʿan claim is brought to deny a child's filiation, the court considers it after a DNA test is conducted by its order, if the woman consents to it; if the woman does not consent to the DNA test, the court completes its consideration of the liʿan claim without it. The liʿan to deny filiation takes place before the court in the form prescribed by Sharia; and if the man takes the liʿan oaths and the woman refrains from taking them, the court rules without her oaths.

Frequently Asked Questions: Establishing Filiation Under UAE Personal Status Law