Shaka Xavier Dorant v Desiree Rachel Dorant & Ors

In a kin inquiry, the court must determine disputed family relationships on the balance of probabilities and direct distribution according to the practical probabilities established by the evidence. The burden rests on the person asserting the particular relationship. The court should assess the totality of the evidence, including legal presumptions, the parents’ opportunity to be together, contemporaneous or subsequent acknowledgments, assertions by the alleged child, documentary records and expert evidence. A missing father’s name on a birth certificate is not, by itself, proof of non-paternity. Expert DNA evidence assists the court but does not replace its evaluation of all the evidence. A presumption of legitimacy is displaced only if the contrary relationship is proved on the balance of probabilities.

The claimant, administrator of an intestate estate exceeding £2 million, sought directions as to the persons beneficially entitled to the estate. The deceased had died without spouse, parents or issue. The central issue was which persons were the biological children of Stanley O’Brien Dorant, whose son McDonald was the deceased.

The possible children were Stella, Clyde, St Clair and Francis. Their descendants advanced competing claims based on documentary evidence, family evidence and DNA analysis. The court conducted the inquiry on written evidence and determined the biological relationships relevant to distribution.

1. Disposition. The court concluded that Stanley’s biological children were McDonald, St Clair and Francis only. Stella and Clyde were not proved to be Stanley’s children. Distribution was therefore directed amongst the issue of McDonald’s half-siblings.
2. Applicable approach. The court had jurisdiction to determine the composition of the class entitled on an intestacy and to direct distribution on the footing established by the evidence. The relevant outcome had to reflect the practical probabilities of what occurred. The burden lay on each party asserting that a particular parent or grandparent was Stanley’s child. Failure to prove the relationship meant that it was not established; the court would not infer Stanley’s paternity merely because another father could not be identified.
3. The court assessed each alleged child in five stages: whether a legal presumption applied; whether the putative parents were co-located around conception; whether either parent made a contemporaneous or subsequent written acknowledgment; what assertions the relevant child had made and when; and whether the DNA evidence supported or contradicted the likely conclusion.
4. Francis benefited from the presumption arising from his birth during Stanley and Clementina’s marriage and from the birth certificate naming both parents. The evidence did not rebut that presumption. St Clair’s paternity was established by the timing and location of the parents, their earlier relationship, his lifelong use of Stanley’s surname and repeated assertions of paternity. The DNA evidence was consistent with that conclusion but was not independently decisive.
5. Clyde’s paternity was not proved because there was no evidence placing Stanley in Barbados at the relevant time, no reliable alternative evidence establishing the relationship and no DNA sample from his descendants. Stella’s paternity was also not proved. Her birth certificate omitted the father’s name, the timing of Stanley’s arrival made paternity less probable, and the later documentary and oral evidence was insufficiently reliable. The low autosomal DNA likelihood ratio did not displace the conclusion drawn from the other evidence.

First-instance kin inquiry. No appellate history is stated in the judgment.