If you read the requirements published by a family court, a state child support agency, or US immigration authorities, one name appears in all of them: AABB. It is the accreditation that separates a laboratory whose results institutions will act on from one whose results they will not.
What AABB is
AABB is a professional association that develops standards and runs accreditation programs for laboratories, including a program specifically for relationship testing - the field that covers paternity, maternity, and kinship analysis.
Accreditation is not a certificate a laboratory buys. It involves meeting published standards, on-site assessment, proficiency testing, and periodic reassessment. AABB publishes a searchable list of accredited facilities, which is the practical tool for checking a laboratory's claim.
What the standards actually require
Relationship-testing accreditation covers the whole path a sample takes, not just the chemistry:
- Chain of custody - documented procedures for identity verification, collection, sealing, transfer, and receipt
- Sample handling - labelling, storage, and tracking that prevents mix-ups
- Analytical standards - validated methods, a sufficient marker panel, and defined interpretation rules
- Statistical practice - how paternity indices are computed and which population databases are used
- Proficiency testing - regular blind testing against known samples
- Personnel qualifications - who may perform and sign off on analyses
- Reporting - what a report must state, and who may sign it
- Quality management - error detection, corrective action, and record retention
The point is systemic. Any competent technician can produce a correct profile once. Accreditation is about whether the laboratory reliably catches the times something goes wrong.
Who requires it
| Body | Requires AABB accreditation |
|---|---|
| Family and probate courts | Effectively yes |
| State child support agencies | Yes |
| USCIS and consular posts | Yes, explicitly |
| Vital records offices | Via the underlying court order or acknowledgment |
| Benefit agencies | Generally yes |
| You, personally | No - but it is still how you tell a good lab from a bad one |
Immigration is the strictest: the USCIS Policy Manual requires an AABB-accredited laboratory to arrange the testing and to send results directly to the government.
AABB is not the same as CLIA
Two different things that get conflated:
- CLIA is the federal certification framework for clinical laboratories, administered by CMS under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments. It governs laboratory operations broadly and is mandatory for clinical testing.
- AABB relationship testing accreditation is specific to parentage and kinship analysis, and covers the identity and custody requirements that clinical certification does not address.
A laboratory can hold CLIA certification and still be unsuitable for a court case. See what CLIA does and does not cover.
The trap: the collector is not the laboratory
This is the single most useful thing to know. The storefront that swabs your cheek - a walk-in lab, a patient service centre, a mobile phlebotomist - is usually not the laboratory that analyses the sample. It is a collection site.
When you check accreditation, you need the name of the testing laboratory, not the collection site. Ask directly: "Which laboratory processes this sample?" Then check that name against the AABB list yourself. A collection site cannot be AABB-accredited for relationship testing, and any that claims to be is confused about its own role.
How to verify, in two minutes
- Ask the provider for the exact legal name of the testing laboratory.
- Open the AABB accredited facility list.
- Search for that name and confirm the accreditation covers relationship testing.
- If you cannot find it, ask the provider to explain. A legitimate laboratory answers this question comfortably.
Does accreditation change the answer?
Not the science, in the typical case. An unaccredited laboratory using a modern marker panel will usually produce the same numbers. What accreditation changes is:
- Whether anyone official will accept the result
- Whether errors are systematically caught rather than occasionally noticed
- Whether the report can survive a challenge, and whether the laboratory will stand behind it
- Whether the marker panel and statistical treatment meet a published standard
For a purely private test, an unaccredited laboratory is a risk rather than a certainty of harm. For anything else it is a wasted purchase.
Practical rules
- For any test a court, agency, or government body will see: AABB-accredited laboratory, no exceptions.
- For a private at-home test: still prefer an accredited laboratory. Many at-home brands use one, and it costs little more.
- Always verify the laboratory name, not the brand or the collection site.
- Ask how many markers are tested. Twenty or more is current practice.
- Be sceptical of any provider that will not name its laboratory.
To find a collection site near you and check what laboratory it uses, browse the directory by state.
What accreditation cannot tell you
It is a floor, not a ranking. Accreditation says a laboratory meets a published standard; it does not say one accredited laboratory is better than another, and it does not tell you anything about price, turnaround, or how the company treats customers.
Nor does it audit the collection site you actually visit. A collection site operates under the laboratory's procedures, and the quality of that visit depends on how well the site is trained and supervised. If a collector does not check your ID, does not photograph you, or seals the package after you leave, the accreditation of the laboratory downstream does not repair it.
What to do if a provider is not accredited
It depends entirely on what you need.
- Court, agency, birth certificate, immigration, benefits, probate: walk away. The result will be rejected and you will pay twice.
- Purely private curiosity: it is your call, but ask what marker panel is used and how a single-marker mismatch is handled. If those answers are vague, the price saving is not worth it.
- You already tested with an unaccredited laboratory: treat the result as a strong hint rather than an answer, and retest at an accredited laboratory before acting on it.
The short version
Ask two questions before you pay anybody: which laboratory runs this sample, and is that laboratory accredited by AABB for relationship testing? Verify the answer yourself rather than trusting a logo. Everything else about choosing a provider is secondary to those two sentences.