What DNA can show
- Unexpected parentage: a parent who is not the person on the birth record.
- Adoption, donor conception, and unknown-father cases.
- Half-siblings and other relatives nobody in the family had mentioned.
Before you test a living relative
- Ask yourself whether they want to know what a test can show, and whether you are ready for what it shows about you.
- Testing someone else, or uploading their kit, requires their informed consent. The consent box asks you to confirm it, and it is not a formality.
- Consider the people who are not in the room: a relative's result also describes their parents, children and siblings.
Approaching a match
- Write as you would want to be written to: who you are, what you share, what you are asking, and that no answer is also an answer.
- Do not announce a conclusion. A match is evidence; a relationship is a decision made with more than one source.
- Give people time. Some will never reply, and that is their right.
How AutoTreeGen helps
The platform never labels a match as a specific relationship by itself. A parentage conflict is shown as a conflict with its evidence, as a hypothesis for you to review, never as a fact pushed into the tree. You decide what is recorded and who sees it.