Which DNA test best to establish who my Father is? Likely Aunt has offered to take test with me~!

[54isanopendoor]

Can anyone recommend which test is best please?
Potential Aunt & I live 500m apart so something postal & easy to use prob best.
(it would be ideal if it were reliable enough to use in court if necessary)
Thank you.

Ancestry has the largest database and if you take out a free trial subscription you will be able to see family trees where those individuals have made them public.

Your second test should be with 23 and Me rather than My Heritage. Its not that My Heritage is good, it is. Both Ancestry and 23 and Me are closed databases. It mean if you tests with Ancestry your DNA is compare to the millions of other who have tested with Ancestry. The same with 23 and Me only 23 and Me eg only the millions of other 23 and Me testers. However both Ancestry and 23 and Me allow you to do something very simple but cost effective. You can down load a file of your DNA and the DNA of your relative and upload both files to My Heritage. Both files can be uploaded to a My Heritage Account and effectively counts as if you had paid for a two full My Heritage tests. There is a small fee £20-30 to get access to some of the sites extra features, however, this covers you for as many test as you care to add. You can raw file from both Ancestry and 23 and Me.

There are two other sites which you can add your raw files to free of charge. But I don't want to confuse you too much so will just leave this here. The accuracy for predicting close relationships likes parents, siblings and 1st cousins is excellent. Beyond 2nd cousin it bases the relationship on probability so is good for confirming and or supporting more closely matched individuals relationships. I have done a few of these so AMA.

that should read **it's not that My Heritage is not good...

Hi @ImaginaryDragon
Between posting & your (very helpful thank you!reply I ordered 2 kits from Amazon as I need to take them with me & travel tomorrow to see the elderly aunt who has offered. I ordered the 'MyHeritage' ones as I could get 2 (1 for her & 1 for me) for under £100 & the others were much more expensive (I'm broke & I have quite a lot of travel costs to factor in). I hope I've not muffed up now :(

I might be missing something but I don't know why everyone keeps going on about the size of the databases and other potential matches. You simply want to know if your dna is an aunt/niece match with the other lady's dna. Doesn't matter if anyone else in either extended family is on a database at all does it? So I would say it doesn't matter if you've gone for the cheap one. As long as they have both your sample and the assumed aunt's surely that's all that matters?

Hi @Smidge001 Yes, I just need to know if this woman is my Aunt. There is also a potential Uncle I could ask (which might be a 'stronger match' if male DNA? as it's the link to a dead Father I am trying to prove one way or the other). I suppose Ancestry might have more cousins etc on it so might be more useful in proving more family links? I seem to be being quite dense about it, sorry.
I think I'm struggling with the whole concept of the mess my Mother made of things so I'm finding it hard to think about the Test properly.

The larger the database the higher the likelihood that if the Aunt is not a match that there will be another match that will help confirm the likely identity of the bio father. There is always a chance that the Aunt may be an NPE, "- Non-Parental Event or, more popularly now, Not Parent Expected. A “NPE” is a person who discovers through DNA testing for ancestry that their presumed parent is not their biological parent" DNAcentre.com Hang around DNA sites long enough your mind will be blown. The bigger the database the higher the chance of confirming a family match however, that still relies on a close family member having taken a DNA test. In general people start with the largest and work from there, add more tests as required.

When you get on Ancestry, you can sort the relatives by how close they are (how much overlap they have). Ideally you want to find someone on your mom's side to match with, this can also help to track down your male side relatives (assuming your posited aunt isn't a close match).

How exciting for you. Hope you get some answers.

Are you a man or a woman OP?

If you’re a man, then a paternal uncle’s DNA should be very helpful because you would both have more or less the same y chromosome.
If you’re a woman, then you don’t have a Y chromosome anyway so it’s no more helpful then any other full sibling.
Scientists sometimes trace paternal lines in a population by looking at y chromosomes in men and maternal lines by looking at mitochondrial DNA in both men and women.

Ancestry is very reliable. I have done this and 23andme. Ancestry has more uk people ime while most of my matches on 23andme are American. In a way as your potential aunt is testing it doesn’t matter…..but I would say use ancestry as you’re more likely to find random second cousins, etc as well.

I found out that my grandad is not my grandad and have found half cousins on ancestry. But my 23andme test didn’t uncover this.

I found out that my grandad is not my grandad and have found half cousins on ancestry. But my 23andme test didn’t uncover this.

Someone who worked with OH was persuaded to do a test for a relative doing family history only to find that he wasn't his daughters father which was news to him.

I suspect 20-30 years ago nobody thought this sort of check would be available.

Definitely. My grandmother took that secret to her grave and my mum and aunt died not knowing that they had a different dad.

These kits sound interesting. I hope you get the answers you need Op.

Hope it goes well with your potential aunt today OP

Dont know where you got the idea that ancestry tests cost £150, unless you meant the price for 2 of them. As mentioned above if potential aunt turns out not to be an aunt the biggest database gives you some chance of finding the truth without asking the 80 year old to test.

DNA testing is very accurate, the only reason an ancestry test wont hold in court is because you need proof of who took it. Quite a few people discover something unexpected in their ancestry. That varies from Dad or grandad not being Dad or grandad to unknown half siblings to a murderer or bigamist in your past or even a baby swapped at birth.

I would ordinarily recommend Ancestry as they have the largest database for potential matches with an unknown relative, and they allow you to upload your data into other sites.

However this is a different scenario. OP thinks she knows who her father was and is testing a potential aunt, so matches with others aren't as important she is just looking to establish that one particular link.

OP I am not too familiar with My Heritage but all websites will express results in numbers and give potential relationships as a possibility rather than stating an absolute "this is your aunt". The numbers are centimorgans, and for an aunt/niece relationship you'd be expecting to see a result of 1201 - 2282 centimorgans, with an average of 1741. This is assuming your potential aunt and your potential dad were full siblings.

https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4