Can you please help with a legal question ? (see details please)?

I have a friend that has a one and a half year old child whose father refuses to pay ANY child support. She is not married to him and his name is NOT on the birth certificate. What steps can she follow to prove paternity and what if he is unwilling to be tested? Can he be forced to submit to the testing and who must pay for the test? She knows his name, date of birth and where he works but does not have his social security number. He has given her a story about the test costing one thousand dollars and that he cannot afford it but I feel he is trying to stall.
She has gotten a part time job and sitter but is struggling to make ends meet and can't afford lawyers or fees. What can she do to get the ball rolling on this situation. She lives in New York City.

If she serves him with a paternity petition and he fails to show up on the apointed court date does she have to "start all over again"?

Every US jurisdiction must by law have an office responsible for collecting child support from non-paying, non-custodial parents. You don't say in what county she lives. The following site contains the numbers of the family courts in each NYC county:

http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/nyc/famil...

She can start there by calling & making an appointment. She will have to bring the birth certificate. They can file a non-support petition based on her allegation of who the father is and the court will order the DNA test. The State or County will advance the costs.

The DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES can help her collect child support. The paternity tests are out-rageously expensive, not sure how much but $1000 wouldn't surprise me. Something similar happened to a friend of mine when the the DHR filed against her husband in behalf of a woman claiming he was the father of her child. He went to talk to them and after a short while the charges were dropped. The mother and my friend's husband were both Caucasian. The child was very plainly of mixed Afro-American heritage. Anyway, the DHR is the place to start.

Has she applied for food stamps or other government support? If she is getting that sort of assistance they have ways of cajoling the father in to testing.

I don't know NY law, but it seems she has no documentation of the father and is in a bad place with regards to all of your questions.

She should go to the Dept. of Social Services in her area. They can help her sort through this. Also, some law schools will help people. There are also "pro bono" lawyers who will help low income people for free. Good luck.

tell her to go to her closest child support office. they can help her out and direct her to the correct legal advice.

First she has to get a DNA test to prove paternity.

If she goes to the child support enforcement office and asks for help, they will ask her to fill out a bunch of forms about who she thinks the father is.

Now, I don't know about new York City, but where I live, if the father disputes the fact that he is the father, but the mother says he is, then the state will do the D.N.A. testing and they pay for it too.

If he is found to be the father and has never paid a dime in child support, they will make him pay her all the way back to the time the child was born and here, they will garnish his wages and take up to 50% of every check and send it to the mother.