The Manitoba court decision of Nandwani v Nandwani 2011 CarswellMan 501, caught the attention of disinherited.com out here in BC.

The case had to do with an application for Court ordered DNA samples.

The deceased immigrated to Canada when his purported son was five months old.

The mother and the son did not follow the deceased to Canada.

The mother instead married the deceased’s brother who raised the son as his own.

Accordingly under a partial or full intestacy, if the son was the child of the deceased, then he would inherit before the deceased’s siblings who claimed to be his

next of kin, and thus the heirs on an intestacy.

The siblings brought a court application requesting the son and brother to provide saliva samples for DNA testing to determine whether the son was in fact a child

of the brother.

The court ordered the son and brother to provide DNA samples for paternity testing, as there was prima facie  merit to using DNA testing to determine the issue.

The court found jurisdiction to order the brother, as a non-party to the court action, to provide DNA samples under the inherent jurisdiction of the court. The court

determined that no harm would flow to the brother if he were ordered to provide the samples, and he was not very far removed from the dispute.

 

disinherited.com fully approves of the reasoning of this decision and the preciseness of DNA testing to determ paternity, amongst otherwise very unreliable and

often murky evidence.