Court Opinion

ID: 9529900
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:55:17.987072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:57.098526
License: Public Domain

ORME, Presiding Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. I believe the trial court erred as a matter of law in placing the two younger children in a permanent state of limbo, which is simply not the kind of permanency the law is intended to promote. My colleagues compound that problem by sending, the matter back for unnecessary further proceedings, which are likely to extend the period of uncertainty in these children’s lives by many months.
DFS proved by clear and convincing evidence that the children’s mother was an unfit parent despite substantial efforts by DFS to rehabilitate her. The trial court clearly erred in basing its decision on Dr. Sanders’s peculiar recommendation, premised on questionable theories especially when applied to children so young and so long removed from the custody of their parent. Such a recommendation is at odds with the policy concerns correctly identified in the main opinion and is not contemplated in the applicable statutes, also as explained in the main opinion.
Without even getting to the question of whether the motion for new trial should have been granted, I would, therefore, simply reverse the trial court’s judgment with respect to the two younger children and direct that the mother’s parental rights be terminated.
The older child presents a different situation. For several reasons — her own abuse of the younger children, the considerable age difference, the fact she has a different father, the fact her foster placement has always been in a different home than where the younger two were placed — this is not a situation where keeping all three children together is necessary or desirable. Indeed, no one seems to have even suggested it. Nor does their legal status have to be in lockstep. As an older child with an existing relationship with her mother and a desire to continue that relationship, the need for continuity and a measure of stability in her life may well be enhanced by an arrangement of the sort the trial court decreed. Remaining with a loving proctor mother who can better fulfill her daily needs, while continuing a relationship with her natural mother, seems to make sense.
For the older child, whose status was in no way put in issue by the motion for new trial, the only question, then, is whether such a sensible arrangement is legally permissible. Given the discussion in the main opinion, it appears this exact “permanent guardianship” arrangement, in the absence of termination of parental rights, is not specifically authorized by statute. But as long as the entire matter is being remanded anyway, I am content to join my colleagues in remanding the older child’s case to give the trial court a *1021chance to devise a disposition that -will ae-complish the underlying purposes the court had in mind without running afoul of statutory directives.