It's hard to imagine how the Anna Nicole Smith paternity fight could get any zanier. Four potential fathers, one of them the husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor (and a prince to boot!); one current boyfriend, one former boyfriend, one dead husband. And, um, millions of dollars at stake.

If 5-month-old Dannielynn wants to crawl back into the fetal position, who could blame her?

What gets lost in these stories, though, is an unsexy reality: Paternity testing is neither new nor reserved for celebrities dead or alive. Most matters of maternal and paternal heritage (now generally called "parentage,") play out quietly and for pretty pedestrian reasons. Fully half of the 1,200 parentage tests performed by Memorial Blood Centers annually, for example, are immigration-related.

"We do tons of cases where people immigrate and want to bring their families; first children and parents, and then siblings," said Mary Mount, manager of parentage testing services for MBC, which houses the only Minnesota-based lab. These families' birth records may have been destroyed in war or through a natural disaster, she said. Sometimes a tribe doesn't keep records.

DNA testing, in which four swab samples are taken from inside the cheeks, is often the only way to prove people are related, Mount said. The cost for a family of three is $495. Results are available within 10 days, with either a 0 percent or greater-than 99-percent likelihood of parentage.

The other 600 or so cases a year performed by MBC fall into more familiar territory, she said: child custody and support, Social Security benefits, tribal rights, adoptees desiring to learn who their parents are for emotional or medical reasons, even determining whether twins are fraternal or identical.

Mount chuckles at the attention paid to current paternity battles, as if Anna Nicole Smith (and celebrities such as Puff Daddy, Mel Gibson and Eddie Murphy) begat the trend. Her lab has been doing paternity testing since the 1950s and she's been on board for nearly 30 years. "My theory is that, back in the day, there were a lot of secrets," she said. "Nobody talked about it. There was always this myth that you must be a fallen woman to not know who the father was."

But determining the father was far tougher back in the day. Babies had to be at least 6 months old before they could be tested, and labs were limited to basic blood tests of ABO and Rh. "You could say he is not the father," Mount said, "but there was very little certainty that he was."

Around 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court decided several cases that gave children born out of wedlock the right to demand child support, Social Security benefits and inheritances from their biological fathers. This led to an outcry for more accurate testing, which led in the 1980s to DNA analysis and its near-perfect results. (To reach 100 percent accuracy, you'd have to swab every man in the world, said Mount, who chairs a national board that accredits paternity testing programs.)

DNA testing certainly benefits women and children, but it's also a boon to fathers. Some want desperately to be involved in the lives of their children, others don't think they're the man. The American Association of Blood Banks revealed that, of more than 300,000 parentage tests done in 2000, 30 percent were not the biological father. By 2006, the number of tests was up to 400,000, Mount said, compared to 77,000 in 1988.

Mount is a stickler for confidentiality, but she admits there have been a few cases that would make Maury Povich grin with glee. There were two men, for example, who exchanged driver's licenses in the blood center's parking lot before the imposter walked inside, or the mom who brought in a different child for testing because she didn't want the dad involved.

But most people, she said, are not only willing to be responsible for their children, but grateful for the opportunity.

Kirkland Johnson sees that real world of paternity played out every day, too. The director of the Young Dads Program at the Minneapolis Employment Action Center works with fathers ages 15 to 29. Hardly any are married. All live at the poverty level. Some are too immature or angry to hold down a job. But most, he said, just want to have a chance to do it right. "All they want to do is see their kids. They don't care about jumping through hoops," he said.

His nonprofit organization helps them establish paternity, teaches them parenting skills and anger management, and helps them file motions to get more parenting time, visitation or even custody - "whatever it takes to get a man stable, sufficient and connected to his kids."

He doesn't think that's the goal for any of the four men vying for little Dannielynn.

"Everybody's motive (in that case) is greed and money," he said. "No one is coming forward for the best interest of the child."

(c) 2007, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

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