IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 17-1408

Filed December 20, 2017

IN THE INTEREST OF R.O.,

Minor Child,

M.C., Mother,

Appellant,

R.O., Father,

Appellant.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Barbara H. Liesveld, 

District Associate Judge.

The mother and father appeal separately the termination of their parental 

rights. AFFIRMED ON BOTH APPEALS.

Annette F. Martin, Cedar Rapids, for appellant mother.

Craig Elliott, Anamosa, for appellant father.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Kathryn K. Lang, Assistant 

Attorney General, for appellee State.

Ryan P. Tang of Law Office of Ryan P. Tang, P.C., Marion, guardian ad 

litem for minor child.

Considered by Vaitheswaran, P.J., and Potterfield and McDonald, JJ.
2

POTTERFIELD, Judge.

The mother and biological father of R.O. appeal the termination of their 

parental rights to the child.1 The mother maintains she should have been given 

additional time to work toward reunification. The father maintains the State failed 

to make reasonable efforts to reunify R.O. and claims this failure precludes the 

termination of his parental rights.

I. Standard of Review.

“We review termination of parental rights de novo.” In re T.S., 868 N.W.2d 

425, 431 (Iowa Ct. App. 2015). “We will uphold an order terminating parental rights 

where there is clear and convincing evidence of the statutory grounds for 

termination.” Id. Evidence is clear and convincing when there is no serious or 

substantial doubt as to the correctness of the conclusions of law drawn from the 

evidence.” Id.

II. Mother’s Appeal.

A. Background Facts and Proceedings.

At the time R.O. was born, in the spring of 2013, the Iowa Department of 

Human Services (DHS) was already involved with the mother and her other 

children2 due to the mother’s ongoing issues with methamphetamine and her 

mental health. R.O. was born with marijuana in his system, and he was removed 

from the mother’s care within a few days of his birth. He remained out of the 

 

1 The parental rights of R.O.’s legal father were also terminated. He does not appeal. 

2 The mother has three other minor children who were adjudicated children in need of 

assistance (CINA). Two of the mother’s children were in the care of their father and her 

third child resided with a family friend. The mother’s rights to her other children were not 

terminated. 
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mother’s care until September 2013. Even after his return, the CINA proceedings 

continued until they were ultimately closed in October 2014.

The present case began in September 2015, after the mother was arrested 

for possession of methamphetamine. R.O. remained in the mother’s care until 

November, when she went to jail. The removal was short-lived, and R.O. was 

returned to the mother’s care when she was released—after approximately one 

week. 

R.O. was removed from the mother’s care for a third time—the second 

during these proceedings—in January 2016. The mother had been arrested again 

and was unavailable to parent R.O. Additionally, she had other pending criminal 

matters to deal with.

DHS attempted a trial home placement with R.O. and the mother in March 

2016, but the mother relapsed on methamphetamine within a few days. The 

mother also had a relapse in November 2016 and February 2017. 

At the time of the termination hearing in May 2017, the mother was forty

years old and had a twenty-two-year history of using methamphetamine. 

According to her testimony, her longest period of sobriety during that twenty-two 

years was two or two-and-a-half years.

The hearing took place over two days—May 15 and 19. The mother was 

released from jail between the first and second days of hearing; she had been 

incarcerated in March 2017 following a probation violation. She remained on 

probation.

The mother testified that she had a “breakthrough” in February 2017 and 

was now addressing issues that she had never addressed before, such as 
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underlying trauma and how it had affected her decisions. She was also able to 

verbalize how her drug abuse affected her children. She testified she believed that 

her sobriety would last this time. The mother’s therapist testified she had seen a 

change in the mother since February and agreed the mother was more committed 

to sobriety than she had been earlier in their relationship. 

At the hearing, the mother agreed she needed to “continue to address [her] 

mental health and [her] sobriety issues” to have R.O. returned to her care. The 

mother was asked, “How long—how much time do you reasonably think it would 

be before [R.O.] could safely be returned to your care before we saw that, before 

the department saw that this is a real thing?” She responded, “I’m in agreement

with what [the social worker] testified to as July is reasonable, the end of July.” 

The court terminated the mother’s parental rights to R.O. pursuant to Iowa 

Code section 232.116(1)(f) (2017). The mother appeals.

B. Legal Grounds.

The mother argues she “should have been allowed more time to 

demonstrate that the therapy she finally received . . . has helped her understand 

her addiction and mental-health issues and that she now has the coping skills to 

maintain her sobriety and care for her children.” The court may order an additional 

six-month period to work toward reunification only if the court makes “the 

determination that the need for removal of the child from the child’s home will no 

longer exist at the end of the additional six-month period.” Iowa Code 

§ 232.104(2)(b). 

While the mother maintains this time is different, she has been dealing with 

her addiction to methamphetamine for over half of her life. She has maintained 
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relatively short periods of sobriety before—at most, two-and-a-half years—but thus 

far has always returned to using the drug. Throughout these proceedings, the 

mother had at least three relapses. Although she had maintained sobriety for 

slightly more than three months at the time of the termination hearing, she was 

incarcerated during approximately two of those months. Additionally, the mother’s 

most recent relapse occurred after the petition to terminate her parental rights had 

been filed. We hope the mother really has turned the corner in her battle with her 

addiction, but we “look skeptically at ‘last-minute’ attempts to address longstanding 

issues, finding them inadequate to preclude termination of parental rights.” In re 

A.D., No. 15-1508, 2016 WL 902953, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 9, 2016). Based 

on the mother’s long-term history of drug addiction, we cannot say the need for 

R.O.’s removal would no longer exist if she was given additional time to work 

toward reunification.

The child has been removed from the mother’s care a number of times since 

his birth. He has stayed with a number of foster families, forcing him to depend on 

a number of different individuals for his care and comfort. At the time of the 

termination hearing, R.O. had been living with his current foster family for 

approximately nine months, and the foster parents wanted to adopt R.O. They 

were committed to providing R.O. with security and stability and indicated their 

willingness to continue a relationship between R.O. and his siblings. This is in 

R.O.’s best interests. See In re C.B., 611 N.W.2d 489, 495 (Iowa 2000) (“Insight 

for the determination of the child’s long-range best interests can be gleaned from 

‘evidence of the parent’s past performance for that performance may be indicative 
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of the quality of the future care that parent is capable of providing.’” (citation 

omitted)). 

We affirm the termination of the mother’s parental rights.

II. Father’s Appeal.

A. Background Facts and Proceedings.

R.O.’s biological father was imprisoned in January 2015 and remained there 

until February 2016—a number of months into the pendency of the present action. 

The father requested visits with R.O. after his release from prison to a half-way 

house; those visits did not begin for approximately one month.

The father and R.O. visited regularly throughout the time he remained in the 

halfway house, but after his release in July 2016, the father began confirming and 

attending visits less frequently. According to the father’s testimony, he relapsed 

on methamphetamine in July and September. As a result, his parole was revoked, 

and the father was sent back to prison in October.

In January 2017, after the court ordered the State to file the petition to 

terminate the father’s parental rights, the father asked DHS to facilitate visits 

between him and R.O. at the prison. DHS denied the request, and a court hearing 

was held on the matter. The court denied the father’s request for visitation in 

prison, stating:

The court notes that the permanency goal in this case has 

never been reunification with the father. The parents are not married. 

There are no district court custodial orders between the parents and 

the current permanency goal pending is return home to mother. 

Although Anamosa Penitentiary has a family visitation area and 

protocols in place for visits to occur and the distance from Cedar 

Rapids to Anamosa is not onerous for a child [R.O.’s] age based 

upon the record, the court finds that substantial evidence exists to 

believe that reasonable visitation or supervised visitation between 
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[R.O.] and his father at the Anamosa Penitentiary would cause an 

imminent risk to the child’s life or health herein. 

The father participated in the termination hearing by way of phone, from prison. 

He testified that he anticipated discharging his sentence in March 2018. 

Following the termination hearing, the court terminated the father’s parental 

rights pursuant to Iowa Code section 232.116(1)(f). The father appeals.

B. Legal Grounds.

The father maintains the State failed to make reasonable efforts to reunify 

him with R.O. Specifically, he focuses on the month-long delay between his 

February 2016 prison release and the beginning of visits and the refusal to provide 

him in-prison visits after his January 2017 request.3 

The State must make reasonable efforts to reunify a parent and a child, 

even when the parent is incarcerated. See In re S.J., 620 N.W.2d 522, 524–25 

(Iowa Ct. App. 2000). “The services required to be supplied an incarcerated 

parent, as with any other parent, are only those that are reasonable under the 

circumstances.” Id. at 525. In determining what is reasonable, we consider:

the age of the children, the bonding the children have or do not have 

with their parent, including any existing clinical or other 

recommendations concerning visitation, the nature of parenting

deficiencies, the physical location of the child and the parent, the 

limitations of the place of confinement, the services available in the 

prison setting, the nature of the offense, and the length of the 

parent’s sentence.

Id. 

 

3 The father had a court hearing on his request for in-prison visits, and the court denied 

his request in a March 2017 permanency review order. The father did not appeal from the 

permanency review order. However, we assume without deciding the father may 

challenge the issue of reasonable efforts here on appeal.
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We first consider the time lapse between the father’s request for visits with 

R.O. in February 2016 and the start of visits on March 21. The father testified that 

he met the social worker on February 18 and completed a social history. He 

testified he then contacted the family safety, risk, and permanency (FSRP) worker, 

who had to set up visitation and find a place for visits. The father also had to take 

steps to get it approved with his counselor at the halfway house. Based on all the 

steps that had to be taken, we cannot say the approximately one-month delay was 

a failure to make reasonable efforts. As the father testified, “Scheduling and 

everything takes time.”

We also cannot say DHS’s decision not to provide visits to the father while 

he was in prison was a failure to provide reasonable efforts. Here, the father did 

not request visits until after the termination petition had already been filed. The 

father had not taken advantage of his scheduled visits before his parole was 

revoked, and there did not appear to be much of a bond between R.O. and the 

father when he did attend visits. The FSRP worker testified visits between the 

father and R.O. were “mostly just fun and playing.” The father had spent most of 

R.O.’s life in prison, and he was scheduled to remain in prison for approximately 

fourteen more months at the time of his request—well past the statutory 

requirement to determine permanency for R.O. Additionally, the father admitted 

he had not sent any letters or made any phone calls to R.O. since he was sent 

back to prison in October 2016. 

Because the State established that it made reasonable efforts to reunify 

R.O. and the father, and because termination of the father’s parental rights is in 

R.O.’s best interests, we affirm the termination of the father’s parental rights.
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IV. Conclusion.

Because there is clear and convincing evidence the statutory grounds for 

termination have been met and termination is in R.O.’s best interests, we affirm 

the termination of the mother’s and the biological father’s parental rights.

AFFIRMED ON BOTH APPEALS.