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On October 12th, Children’s Day is celebrated and an alarming data shows that in the state of Acre, 634 children were recorded without the name of the parent (from January until early August 2025), a total of 9,098 births in the state during the same period. According to the National Association of Natural People Registers (Arpen-Brasil), Rio Branco leads the ranking of absent parents in Acre, with 221 children registered only with the name of the mother. Cruzeiro do Sul, with 190 records, followed by Tarauacá, with 48.
The Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA), in its article 3, tells us that children and adolescents enjoy all fundamental rights to the human person, “ensuring them, by law or by all other means, all opportunities and facilities in order to provide them with physical, mental, moral, spiritual and social development in conditions and freedom and dignity.
We know that paternal absence causes serious psychological and emotional problems, such as: low self -esteem, feelings of abandonment and insecurity, difficulty in building bonds, behavioral problems and academic difficulties, drug use, among many others.
In this sense, the Paternity investigation Law -Law 8.560 of December 29, 1992 -and the Father Present Program of the National Council of Justice (CNJ) -2010 -brings the administrative possibility to solve this problem. But how does this law work in practice? I will explain to you. When the woman is married, she can register her son alone, just taking the marriage certificate to the notary’s office and the name of the father (husband) will be in the birth seat, or, the father goes alone and with the document of maternity and the mother records the child.
When the woman is not married and is not accompanied by the child’s father, the registry office should ask if she knows the name and address of that alleged father and thus, the registry himself notifies the judgment of public records – in the capital, and inside it is the responsibility of the unique rods – and the judgment, in turn, summons that alleged father to compare in a previously designated audience.
In most cases, that supposed father appears to the hearing and both do a pre-agreement: they decide to perform DNA exam, which can be funded by the state when the parties cannot pay. In pre-agreement define that: as the DNA result is positive, the court will automatically send a letter to the competent notary to register in the child’s birth seat the name of the father, giving him the paternal surname and the name of the paternal grandparents. If the parties choose, they can even predict pension value, guard and visitation.
Being the result of the positive DNA examination, the court approves the pre-agreement performed, serving that agreement as a judicial title, being negative, the court extinguishes that process of paternity investigation without judgment of merit.
According to the law, when the alleged father does not attend the hearing the court summons the prosecutor for action, however, in practice the mother is oriented to seek the Public Defender’s Office to enter the paternity investigation action.
It is important to make it clear that the paternity investigation procedure is an administrative procedure that does not need a lawyer, the result of the cooperation between the Civil Registry Office of Natural Persons, the State Justice through the Public Registry and the Public Prosecution Service. This process has given many results, especially inside Acre.
It is of fundamental importance that single mothers know of this rapid and practical possibility to ensure the right to affiliation for their children. Recognition of the State of Affiliation is a very personal, unavailable and imprescriptible right, and may be exercised against parents or their heirs, without any restrictions, observing the secret of justice, as determined by Article 27 of the ECA.
*Rosângela Coelho is a lawyer; Specialist in Civil Procedural Law; Member of the Committee on Family Law, Law and Consumer Protection and Defense, Assistance and Prerogatives of OAB/AC Lawyers; and partner at Coelho Félix Advocacy office.
