Rule 5.350.Procedures for hearings to cancel (set aside) voluntary declarations of parentage or paternity when no previous action has been filed

A voluntary declaration of parentage has the force of a judgment, so setting one aside has its own route. A person who signed one — or another interested party — files the request-and-application form, and the clerk assigns a case number and sets a hearing no earlier than 31 and no later than 45 days after filing.

Service is on the other signatories, personally or by mail, together with a blank responsive declaration so they can answer. Where the local child support agency is providing services in the case, it must be served too.

The decision goes on its own order form. If the declaration is cancelled, the clerk must mail a copy of the order to the Department of Child Support Services so the declaration can be purged from the records — the point being that a cancelled declaration should stop appearing in the state’s registry, not merely lose effect in this case.

The file then becomes the home for what follows: pleadings in any subsequent proceeding involving these parties and this child, including proceedings under the Uniform Parentage Act, must be filed in the file this request opened.