Ancestral DNA testing?

Question

is that considered a legal document?

i'm thinking about having it done so i have solid proof of what i am.

but i don't want to spend alot of money on a useless piece of paper.

Answer 1

Y dna is passed soley from father to son

Mitochondrial DNA is passed from the mother to both sons and daughters but only the daughters pass it on to their children

Most of your DNA is autosomal.  You get it 50-50 from both parents.  However, right now they are not using autosomal. Autosomal is the only DNA that relates a female to her father or a male to his maternal grandfather or paternal grandmoth, or the various spouses of his paternal grandmother's lines or spouses of his maternal grandfathers lines.

Since you are a female, the only DNA tests for genealogy they can do on you now is Mitochondrial.  If you have a brother, it would be best for him to be tested as he could have both the Y & Mitochondrial but it doesn't give him his complete DNA, but it would be more than what yours would be.  

Now, if you are talking about ethnicity. The ethnic testings that are being done do not take you to specific countries and ethnicities.  It will indicate, for instance, Northern European, East Asian, etc.  

FamilyTreeDNA in Houston is probably the number 1 DNA company.  You can just put FamilyTreeDNA in your search engine and find their information

Sorenson Molecular GEnealogical Foundation does your DNA for free. They will not send you a report but you can eventulally see your report online. It took about 6 months for mine to appear.  They plan to contract a company that will interpret the report for a reasonable fee.  They also are working on using autosomal DNA for genealogy purposes and hopes to do so within a year.   You can put SMGF in your search engine to find them.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what a DNA test (for the purpose of genealogy) would help you with. If you are tested to prove your immediate relationship to a parent/sibling/child, it could help you a lot to be tested.

If you're looking to gain nationality to a certain country, based on a DNA test, I think you would be laughed out, because DNA will show you possibly 1000s of years back in your bloodline, and you can't claim a nationality on that. If it's this sort of thing you need it for, you're probably better off finding birth certificates of your immediate ancestors (ie parents, grandparents, g-grandparents).

But anyway, here's some info about DNA testing if you still need it:

You can have a DNA test that will show you what different nationalities make up your blood, but the test can't tell you anything about the people, or their names or where they were born as such, just the area or continent.

Note that women and men can take the DNA test to show their maternal heritage, because women pass on their DNA to both genders, but only men can take the paternal DNA test, since women don't inherit this information from their fathers. If you want to trace your paternal line therefore, you will either need to ask your father, a brother, an uncle, or a male cousin on your paternal side.

There are various sites online, and you should look for the test that suits you, and the costs. You will pay more for more in-depth research, but if you don't need so much depth, you should be okay with the standard test.

I think last time I heard, the standard paternal DNA test was around £100 ($200), from www.ancestry.com

Answer 3

You mean the type that tests back a number of generations? Its not a legal document that I'm aware of. It could be, but I can't think of what you would use it for that would accept it as legal document? What do you mean by 'proof of what you are'?

If you mean testing done on more immediate relatives, like for paternity or similar circumstances then that is used a lot and is considered legal document generally.