Did a child's legal status in biblical Israel depend upon his being acknowledged?

There is no evidence in the Bible that the concept of acknowledgment of children existed in biblical Israel. The bond between the newborn child and his father determined his legal status. Every child born of a legal union was considered his father's legitimate child. This legal principle seems to have been formulated to avert a situation in which a child would be regarded as fatherless, cut off from a family framework, disinherited and deprived of his rights as son and heir. The child's legal status was independent of his father's acknowledgment.