Can a defendant in a paternity action exercise his Fifth Amendment right during the discovery process?

In cases such as this there is no custody or curtailment of freedom of action, no interrogation prior to trial, except for the possible service of interrogatories, request for admissions or other use of the discovery statutes as permitted under Code of Civil Procedure sections 2016 et seq. The complaint is an accusation. The civil litigant may admit or deny allegations appearing in the complaint within the time to answer. A failure to deny will be deemed an admission. (Code Civ.Proc., 431.20.) A defendant in a paternity action can exercise his Fifth Amendment rights during the discovery process. (Gonzales v. Superior Court, supra, 117 Cal.App.3d 57, 65-70, 178 Cal.Rptr. 358.) However, silence can and is used against a defendant in the form of a default judgment. This, in turn, could lead to criminal prosecution pursuant to Penal Code section 270. As the Gonzales court pointed out:

"Here the threat of prosecution is not 'trifling' or 'imaginary' ...., the information gathered by the civil division of the district attorney's office could easily be delivered to the criminal division of that same office. More importantly ... the present case does not involve some imaginary future crime. We are concerned here with possible criminal activity rooted in petitioners' past and current behavior, which could provide the predicate for a finding of criminal intent under section 270. In other words, while actual prosecution might lie in the future, the threat of such prosecution, and the incriminating behavior which forms the basis of that threat, dwell in the present." (Gonzales v. Superior Court, supra, 117 Cal.App.3d 57, 68, 178 Cal.Rptr. 358.) (Emphasis in original.)