TERMINATION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS

The Arkansas Court of Appeals reversed the circuit court’s decision terminating appellant’s parental rights to his presumptive daughter, S.W., finding that the evidence did not support a clear and convincing finding that appellant had any parental rights to terminate. Further, the court of appeals denied appellee Arkansas Department of Human Services’ (DHS) motion to dismiss appellant’s appeal as moot. Although appellant was determined not to be S.W.’s parent, the circuit court terminated appellant’s non-existing parental rights. The court noted that because an involuntary termination can serve as automatic grounds for termination to another child that a parent has or may have in the future, the issues of appellant’s appeal were not moot. When DHS took a 72-hour hold on both S.W. and her sibling, B.C., appellant, who was not named as a party on the initial pleadings, was served with an emergency petition, given notice of the adjudication hearing and listed as S.W.’s legal father on the notice. Later in the case, other men were listed as S.W.’s legal/putative fathers, and appellant was also listed as the legal/putative father of B.C. Though DNA testing revealed a zero percent probability that appellant was S.W.’s father, DHS filed a petition for termination of his parental rights, arguing that appellant was the presumptive legal father to S.W. pursuant to Arkansas Code Annotated Section 9-27-341(c)(2)(A)(ii). Appellant argued that he was not a proper party to proceed against with a termination of parental rights action, and that such rights were terminated based upon a presumptive legal father section of a statute constructed for parties not consistent with his status. The court of appeals agreed with appellant, finding there was no clear and convincing evidence showing that he had any parental rights in regards to S.W. to terminate. Therefore, the court of appeals reversed the circuit court’s decision to terminate appellant’s “parental rights”.
Cite: No. CV-14-5156, 2014 Ark. App. 676 (Ark. Ct. App. 2014)
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