In Bacon v. Bacon, 46 N.Y.2d 477 (1979), the Court of Appeals held that It was legitimate to treat children born outside of a marriage differently from children with married parents because section 516 agreements reduced the need for legal proceedings while helping to ensure that a child would not be left without support from an alleged father. Noting that paternity proceedings at that time involved complex and difficult problems of proof, the Court of Appeals found that the statute passed constitutional muster because it furnished the parties with an incentive to settle these cases in a way which guaranteed the child some means of support and thereby represented a "balanced approach to the sensitive problem it addresses." (Bacon at 480.)