Court Opinion

ID: 9876552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-27 14:03:36.630481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:13.222173
License: Public Domain

Cite as 2023 Ark. App. 400
                 ARKANSAS COURT OF APPEALS
                                        DIVISION I
                                        No. CV-23-88

 ASHLEY WAGNER                                   Opinion Delivered September 27, 2023
                               APPELLANT
                                                 APPEAL FROM THE WASHINGTON
                                                 COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT
 V.                                              [NO. 72JV-21-523]

 ARKANSAS DEPARTMENT OF       HONORABLE STACEY
 HUMAN SERVICES AND MINOR     ZIMMERMAN, JUDGE
 CHILDREN
                    APPELLEES AFFIRMED

                       BRANDON J. HARRISON, Chief Judge

       This is an appeal from an order terminating Ashley Wagner’s parental rights to her

four minor children.1 They came into custody of the Arkansas Department of Human

Services (DHS) 11 August 2021 through an emergency removal because of concerns about

her homelessness and methamphetamine use. Ashley was actively high and paranoid when

DHS workers spoke to her in Fayetteville. She admitted being an addict and having been

in drug rehab multiple times, as recently as May 2021. The three oldest children had been

in DHS custody before.

       The Washington County Circuit Court issued a case plan and orders designed to

facilitate all four children’s reunion with Ashley as a fit parent, the goal the court set when

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        The circuit court also terminated the parental rights of Roy Dabney, the biological
father of the two youngest children. He has not appealed.
it adjudicated them dependent-neglected in this proceeding September 29. Key provisions

included orders not to use drugs or alcohol; to follow the recommendations after a drug-

and-alcohol assessment; to submit to random drug screens as requested by DHS; to maintain

stable housing and employment; and to communicate with DHS family service worker

Hayley Miles at least once a week and keep her informed of any change in her address or

telephone number.

      After a January 2022 review hearing, the circuit court found that Ashley was still

using methamphetamine, had yet to complete inpatient drug treatment, 2 and had not

achieved stable housing or employment. By July 20, Ashley was living in a week-to-week

hotel. Since the proceedings began, she had spent four months homeless, a month living

with her mother, eighteen days in a hospital, and two or three months in a Fort Smith

apartment before she was evicted. She continued to associate with Dabney and refer to him

as family—despite a history of domestic violence and requests to remove him from her

home, and a ten-year no-contact order entered at the end of the previous DHS proceeding.

Though Ashley had partly complied with the court’s orders, the court found she had not

demonstrated stability in housing or employment, or made measurable and sustainable

progress toward reunification. So it changed the permanency goal to adoption.

      A termination hearing was held October 26. The circuit court entered an order on

21 November 2022 finding, by clear and convincing evidence, that DHS had proved three

statutory grounds to terminate Ashley’s parental rights and that terminating her parental

      2
        The circuit court had not yet explicitly ordered Ashley to complete inpatient drug
treatment. After an emergency review hearing March 17, it ordered her to enter and
successfully complete residential drug treatment.

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rights was in her children’s best interest.3 Here, she argues too little evidence supported

those findings.

       Though we review these cases de novo, we will not reverse the circuit court’s

decision unless its findings are clearly erroneous, which means we are left with a “definite

and firm conviction that a mistake has been made” even if some evidence supports them.

Meredith v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2017 Ark. App. 120, at 3, 513 S.W.3d 909, 910–11.

We give the circuit court’s findings some deference because we cannot observe the

witnesses’ testimony and assess their credibility, as it could. Cheney v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum.

Servs., 2012 Ark. App. 209, 396 S.W.3d 272. Proof of just one statutory ground is enough

to terminate parental rights. Gossett v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2010 Ark. App. 240, 374

S.W.3d 205. Further, in termination cases, “time is viewed from the juvenile’s perspective

and the best interests of the children take precedence at every stage of the proceedings.”

Burkett v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2016 Ark. App. 570, at 5, 507 S.W.3d 530, 534 (citing

Ark. Code Ann. § 9-27-102 (Repl. 2020 & 9-27-341(a)(3) (Supp. 2023)).

       Those formal statements might offer parents in ongoing dependency-neglect

proceedings little guidance about how to save their parental rights. They boil down to this:

Some progress is not always enough. A parent must make enough progress soon enough that

       3
         The circuit court found clear and convincing evidence that despite appropriate
efforts by DHS, the children remained out of Ashley’s custody for twelve months, and the
conditions that caused the removal had not been remedied, Ark. Code Ann. § 9-27-
341(b)(3)(B)(i)(a); that other factors or issues arose after the dependency-neglect petition
was filed that demonstrated placement with her would be contrary to their health, safety, or
welfare, and she manifested the incapacity or indifference to remedy them, id. § 9-27-
341(b)(3)(B)(vii)(a); and that there was little likelihood that continued services would result
in successful reunification. Id. § 9-27-341(b)(3)(B)(ix)(a).

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maintaining it through the end of the case would demonstrate that the parent would remain

safe, stable, and sober if the children were returned. The harder a habit is to break, the

sooner the parent needs to break it.           And few habits are harder to break than

methamphetamine use. Appeals where a parent made eleventh-hour progress before her

parental rights were terminated are among the hardest we decide. Inevitably, some of them

will involve parents who would—and did—maintain their fitness, and could have proved it

with more time. But the legal question we must answer is whether the circuit court clearly

erred by doubting them on the record it had. It did not. We hope that Ashley’s progress

will continue, but still affirm the termination of her parental rights.

       When the hearing convened, Ashley was in a better place than she had been when

the case began. She was living in Hot Springs, set to sign the lease on a two-bedroom house

the following day. She had sufficient income for rent in a job she had held more than a

month. After being scheduled six times to start inpatient rehabilitation, she completed it at

Harbor House in Hot Springs September 17. She had tried the Fort Smith Harbor House

first, but she recognized people there she had used drugs with. She testified that she thought,

“This is gonna be pointless,” because they would end up sharing “war stories” and glorifying

drug use. She attributed the delay getting to Hot Springs to trouble getting transportation

assistance from DHS. In Hot Springs she was attending NA and AA meetings, sometimes

two or three times a day. She had not used any illegal drugs or alcohol in sixty days and

dated her last methamphetamine use to July 2022, after the permanency-planning hearing.

She testified that she missed drug screens—twenty-five of them, according to DHS

records—because she either wasn’t notified or the test was scheduled in the wrong city.

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       The circuit court praised Ashley’s recent sobriety, but found that despite reasonable

efforts by DHS, she had not remedied the exposure to methamphetamine and housing

instability that caused the children to be removed from her custody because she had not

demonstrated stability and sobriety long enough. It noted that she had not completed

inpatient drug treatment until 19 September 2022, more than a year after the case had begun.

The circuit court was better positioned to weigh the evidence on this point than we are.

E.g., Bentley v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2018 Ark. App. 374, at 5, 554 S.W.3d 285, 289

(noting that we afford heightened deference to the circuit court’s superior position to

observe the parties personally and weigh their credibility). On the record we have, we

cannot say it clearly erred. So we do not need to discuss the other grounds for termination.

       Finally, Ashley argues that terminating her parental rights was not in her children’s

best interest. The best-interest determination requires considering the likelihood that the

child will be adopted and the potential harm the child could suffer if there is continued

contact with the parent. E.g., McNeer v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2017 Ark. App. 512, at

5, 529 S.W.3d 269, 272. The circuit court heard sufficient evidence that the children are

adoptable. Ms. Miles from DHS testified that all four are bright and sweet natured, with no

medical or emotional barriers to adoption. The foster parent for the two youngest children,

whom Ashley knows from church, expressed interest in adopting all four. There was

testimony that Xavier Mahone, a paternal uncle to two of the children, might likewise be

willing to adopt them.4

       4
        See Taylor v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2016 Ark. App. 453, at 7, 503 S.W.3d 813,
818 (affirming adoptability finding based on testimony that the foster family was interested
in adoption). DHS had not finished clearing Mahone as an appropriate placement, Miles

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       Most of Ashley’s best-interest argument strays too far from what she argued in circuit

court to address on appeal. See Rocha v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2021 Ark. App. 454, at

15, 637 S.W.3d 299, 309 (citing Mitjans v. Ark. Dep’t of Hum. Servs., 2018 Ark. App. 472,

561 S.W.3d 747). What’s left is an argument that the evidence of the children’s bonds with

her, and with each other as siblings, justified giving her more time to demonstrate that her

progress would continue. But “a child’s need for permanency and stability may override a

parent’s request for more time to improve the parent’s circumstances.” Kloss v. Ark. Dep’t

of Hum. Servs., 2019 Ark. App. 389, at 8–9, 585 S.W.3d 725, 730. The circuit court was

concerned that the uncertainty about whether the children would remain in foster care was

affecting their mental health. This was the second time the three older children had been

in foster care. The youngest had been in foster care more than half his life. The court

concluded that Ashley had not yet demonstrated that she would remain sober from meth

when tempted and that the children need permanency now. Potential harm “must be

viewed in a forward-looking manner and in broad terms, including the harm the child

suffers from the lack of a stable, permanent home.” Id. at 8, 585 S.W.3d at 730. Having

reviewed the record de novo, we conclude the circuit court’s finding that termination was

in the children’s best interest was not clear error.

       Affirmed.

       KLAPPENBACH and BROWN, JJ., agree.

testified, because she could not obtain his contact information until a few weeks before the
termination hearing. After the circuit court’s oral ruling on termination, it ordered DHS to
conduct a home study on Mahone and the other foster parents who had been identified as
possible adoptive homes.

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       Tabitha McNulty, Arkansas Commission for Parent Counsel, for appellant.

       Ellen K. Howard, Ark. Dep’t of Human Services, Office of Chief Counsel, for

appellee.

       Dana McClain, attorney ad litem for minor children.

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