IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 21-1942

Filed March 30, 2022

IN THE INTEREST OF L.C.,

Minor Child,

D.H., Mother,

Appellant.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Union County, Monty W. Franklin, 

District Associate Judge.

A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights to a child. 

AFFIRMED.

Shireen L. Carter of Shireen Carter Law Office, PLC, Norwalk, for appellant 

mother.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Ellen Ramsey-Kacena, Assistant 

Attorney General, for appellee State.

Meggen Weeks, Afton, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor child.

Considered by Bower, C.J., and Vaitheswaran and Chicchelly, JJ.
2

VAITHESWARAN, Judge.

A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights to a child born in 

2014.1 She does not challenge the grounds for termination cited by the district 

court. She simply contends termination “was not in the child’s best interests.” See 

Iowa Code § 232.116(2); In re L.B., 2022 WL 495312, at *1, ___ N.W.2d ___, ___

(Iowa 2022) (“The paramount concern in a termination proceeding is the child's 

best interests.”).

The mother was involved with welfare agencies in two States. Initially, the 

State of Nebraska ordered the child removed from her custody based on her 

methamphetamine use and “severe” domestic violence episodes. The child 

remained out of her mother’s care for approximately two and a half years.

The State of Iowa filed a child-in-need-of-assistance petition in 2019, citing 

the mother’s admission to methamphetamine use and the child’s “observations of 

drug use by her parents.” The mother had already agreed to removal of the child 

from her custody. She also stipulated to the child’s adjudication as a child in need 

of assistance. 

The mother entered a residential substance-abuse treatment program, but

the department of human services reported she left “treatment unsuccessfully” 

after just twenty days “due to her aggressive behaviors.” She subsequently went 

“in and out of outpatient treatment.”

 

1 The juvenile court terminated the father’s parental rights in response to an earlier 

termination petition. The court of appeals affirmed the order. See In re L.C., 

No. 21-0891, 2021 WL 3660871, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 18, 2021).
3

Eventually, the mother entered another inpatient treatment program and 

was “successfully discharged” from that program. She followed up with extended 

outpatient treatment. The department employee assigned to the case testified the 

mother was “headed in [the] direction” of reunification. Indeed, the department 

reported she was “doing excellent” and “multiple providers [were] contacting the 

department to ask that [she] be allowed another chance.” Given these 

encouraging developments, the department advocated for “more time” to facilitate 

reunification with the child. But the department cautioned the mother, “[o]ne little 

thing could end it because this has gone on so long, and we have seen this pattern 

of kind of sobriety and then using again, sobriety, using again.” The district court 

approved the request for more time. 

The department afforded the mother semi-supervised visits with her child. 

Then, in preparation for a transition to overnight visits, the department 

administered a sweat patch test. That test was positive for methamphetamine. 

The department renewed its request for termination of parental rights, reasoning:

It is clear that [the mother] care[s] deeply for [the child], however it is 

concerning that [the mother] seems to be participating in a pattern 

that has been established early in this case and in their Nebraska 

case. [The mother] has a stable home, a stable job, and a newly 

established support system within her church. [The mother] was 

believed to be sober, however the positive drug screen is extremely 

concerning considering [the mother’s] substance abuse history and 

the length of this case.

A department supervisor testified, “the positive drug screen, . . . that was kind of 

the straw that broke the camel’s back.” The department noted that the child had 

“been in foster care for 28 months in Iowa and just as long in Nebraska,” resulting 

in “more than half of her seven years of life in and out of home placement.”
4

The district court agreed. The court stated:

For eighteen months after [the child] was removed, [the mother] 

ignored her parental responsibilities and obligations to [the child] and 

only when the threat of termination of her parental rights was 

imminent did she take those responsibilities and obligations 

seriously. And after termination of her parental rights was taken off 

the table by dismissal of the termination Petition concerning her, [the 

mother] once again tested positive for the use of methamphetamine. 

This is exactly what transpired following [the child’s] removal in 

Nebraska. It is time to end this pattern and eliminate the stress, 

emotional harm, drama, and trauma from [the child’s] life and give 

her the opportunity to be a child without these damaging concerns. 

[The child’s] need for safety, certainty, structure, consistency, 

stability, and permanency far outweighs any potential negative 

effects that might be caused by termination of [the mother’s] parental 

rights.

On appeal, the mother “acknowledges that her progress in this case has 

been inconsistent.” Nonetheless, she suggests her improved circumstances 

militate in favor of giving her another chance. She dismisses the positive sweat 

patch test as “unreliable in the circumstances of this case specifically due to [her] 

work environment and employment conditions,” and she asserts she was 

otherwise “able, safe, and appropriate to have [the child] returned to her care on 

the day of the termination proceedings.” 

The district court rejected the argument that the mother’s exposure to paint 

and chemicals at work could have resulted in a positive drug test. The court

reasoned:

[I]f a sweat patch has been exposed to outside contamination, it may 

show positive for methamphetamine but not amphetamine, and the

only way a sweat patch test result will show positive for both 

methamphetamine and amphetamine is if the person has had 

methamphetamine in their body which has been metabolized or 

broken down to produce amphetamine. Therefore [the mother’s]

explanation for the positive test is not credible and she had to have 

used methamphetamine for the result of sweat patch test to be 

positive for methamphetamine and for amphetamine.
5

The court’s findings are supported by the testimony of the department supervisor, 

who stated, “In speaking with a doctor who does the screening . . . [,] some sort of

contaminant would only show a presence of methamphetamine and not 

amphetamine. A person or individual would have had to have metabolized that 

methamphetamine to show the presence of amphetamine.” 

On our de novo review, we agree with the district court that the child’s safety 

would have been compromised had the child been returned to her mother’s 

custody. In other words, termination was in the child’s best interests. 

AFFIRMED.