Answer
Based on official Jordanian legal texts
A marriage-confirmation claim and a lineage claim are different lawsuits in subject and effect, even though they often travel together in undocumented-marriage cases.
The marriage-confirmation claim
- Subject: proving that a valid marriage contract exists between a man and a woman but was never officially registered.
- Parties: the spouses (or one against the other, or against the other's heirs).
- Effect: official registration of the marriage and the marital rights that follow — dowry, spousal maintenance, mutual inheritance between the spouses, and the ability to register any subsequent divorce or return.
The lineage claim
- Subject: proving that a specific child is the child of a specific father.
- Parties: whoever holds a recognized interest in the lineage (the mother for her child, the child, or the father) against the denier or the heirs.
- Effect: the child's rights flowing from parentage — maintenance, inheritance, custody and guardianship, and the child's name and official record.
How they relate
A confirmed marriage is a powerful route to lineage, because a child born on the marital bed is attributed to the husband. That is why, where an urfi marriage produced children, both matters are usually handled together: the marriage is confirmed first, and lineage follows from it. But lineage can also be established independently of proving a marriage — through acknowledgment, for instance — just as a childless marriage can be confirmed on its own.
Why the distinction matters
Choosing the wrong claim wastes time and effort: someone who needs only marital rights needs marriage confirmation; someone claiming a child's rights centers the case on lineage; and someone with both needs can combine the two requests in one lawsuit, subject to the lawyer's and court's assessment.
This is a general answer based on available Jordanian legal sources and does not replace advice from a specialized lawyer in an actual dispute.