Unwed fathers fight for rights

But to claim them, many states require filing with putative registry

In one widely publicized case, Frank Osborne of North Carolina challenged his 5-month-old son's adoption in Utah. The Utah Supreme Court rejected his claim, but a dissenting judge found it unfair that Osborne could not prevent the removal of a child he had lived with, and supported, until the mother "unilaterally and clandestinely" brought the boy to Utah.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, plans to address that problem this year in the Proud Father Act, which would create a national registry.

"In a perfect world, everything would be linked so that everyone could find out if a man had registered or filed for paternity anywhere in the country," said Atlanta lawyer Jim Outman, who has consulted on the Landrieu legislation. "But in the real world, the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing. If there's nothing in the records in their county, their state, how is an adoption agency supposed to know there's a father who's going to come forward in two years? There has to be some security for the adoptive parents and the child."