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Fam. Code, § 7572 · Chapter 3. Establishment of Parentage by Voluntary Declaration

Fam. Code, § 7572

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) The Department of Child Support Services, in consultation with the State Department of Health Care Services, the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, and other affected health provider organizations, shall work cooperatively to develop written materials to assist providers and parents in complying with this chapter. These written materials shall be updated periodically by the Department of Child Support Services to reflect changes in law, procedures, or public need.

(b) The written materials for unmarried parents or parents of a child conceived through assisted reproduction that shall be attached to the form specified in Section 7574 and shall contain the following information:

(1) A signed voluntary declaration of parentage that is filed with the Department of Child Support Services legally establishes parentage.

(2) The legal rights and obligations of both parents and the child that result from the establishment of parentage.

(3) An alleged father’s constitutional rights to have the issue of parentage decided by a court; to notice of any hearing on the issue of parentage; to have an opportunity to present the alleged father’s case to the court, including the right to present and cross-examine witnesses; to be represented by an attorney; and to have an attorney appointed if the alleged father cannot afford one in a parentage action filed by a local child support agency.

(4) That by signing the voluntary declaration of parentage, the father is voluntarily waiving the father’s constitutional rights.

(c) Parents shall also be given oral notice of the rights and responsibilities specified in subdivision (b). Oral notice may be accomplished through the use of audio- or video-recorded programs developed by the Department of Child Support Services to the extent permitted by federal law.

(d) The Department of Child Support Services shall, free of charge, make available to hospitals, clinics, and other places of birth all informational and training materials for the program under this chapter, as well as the declaration of parentage form. The Department of Child Support Services shall make training available to every participating hospital, clinic, local registrar of births and deaths, and other place of birth no later than June 30, 1999.

(e) The Department of Child Support Services may adopt regulations, including emergency regulations, necessary to implement this chapter.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 2023, Ch. 131, Sec. 60. (AB 1754) Effective January 1, 2024.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=FAM&sectionNum=7572.
Text hash
sha256 4d0a06984706f25ff5faf7fdafa2b615a109c247264716e91c71ff249d734f99
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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