If a woman starts or takes out a paternity suit, she asks a court of law to help her to prove that a particular man is the father of her child, often in order to claim financial support from him.
paternity suit in British English
noun
law the US (and in Britain a nontechnical) term for affiliation proceedings
Examples of 'paternity suit' in a sentence
paternity suit
Whatever happened to the days when musicians were fighting off paternity suits?
Times, Sunday Times (2010)
An Indiana woman claimed that he impregnated her but the paternity suit was eventually dismissed.