Court Opinion

ID: 9627857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:57:15.773394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:45:22.549944
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, Judge,
specially concurring.
Upon the record presented to us, I concur in upholding the magistrate’s decree. However, I believe more should be said about the application of our termination statutes to parents who suffer mental disorders. My framework for discussion is the public policy expressed in I.C. § 16-2001, that “wherever possible family life should be strengthened and preserved.” These words are not merely aspirational. They play an important role in the decision to terminate a parent-child relationship.
A termination decree may not issue unless the magistrate finds that a statutory ground for termination has been proven and that termination would serve the best interests of the child. Hofmeister v. Bauer, 110 Idaho 960, 719 P.2d 1220 (Ct.App.1986). The first requirement, establishing a statutory ground for termination, usually presents an issue of parental fitness. Until it is shown by clear and convincing evidence that a natural parent is unfit, his or her constitutionally protected liberty interest in raising a child may not be extinguished involuntarily. Id. See generally Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 102 S.Ct. 1388, 71 L.Ed.2d 599 (1982).1 When a statutory ground for termination has been proven, the focus shifts to the best interests of the child. A child’s relationship to the parent — even a parent shown to be unfit — should be severed only if it appears that the child will be comparatively better off without the relationship. Hofmeister v. Bauer, 110 Idaho at 962 n. 1 and 964 n. 2, 719 P.2d at 1222 n. 1 and 1224 n. 2. In many cases this requirement is satisfied simply by a showing that the child will become eligible for a long-term placement, to be determined later by the court or by a public agency charged with promoting the child’s welfare. But in some situations a court could find that termination would not serve the child’s best interests. One such circumstance would be the loss of a unique advantage of the parent-child relationship, such as a substantial future inheritance. Another circumstance would be a realistic prospect of imminent improvement in the conditions that caused the termination petition to be filed in the first place.
The latter circumstance invokes our public policy of strengthening and preserving family life wherever possible. For example, termination would be inappropriate where child neglect is attributable to a parent’s temporary physical illness. In such a case the state’s proper role, if any, would be to arrange short-term custody and care under the Child Protective Act, I.C. §§ 16-1601 to 1629, until the parent recovered. The parent-child relationship would not be disturbed. Similarly, if a parent suffers from an identifiable mental disorder, a court should not sever the parent-child relationship unless the disorder is unlikely to be alleviated within a reasonable time or the child’s future welfare will continue to be substantially at risk. Indeed, our termination statutes explicitly provide that if termination is sought upon the ground of a parent’s “mental illness or mental deficiency,” the petitioner must show that “there are reasonable grounds to *906believe the condition will continue for a prolonged indeterminate period and will be injurious to the health, morals and well-being of the child.” I.C. § 16-2005(d).
The policy of strengthening and preserving family life also applies where a petition seeks termination, not for a mental disorder per se, but for abuse, neglect or abandonment caused by the mental disorder. If the disorder is identifiable and can be alleviated within a reasonable time, and if the child’s welfare will not continue to be substantially at risk, the parent-child relationship should be preserved. State intervention should be limited to temporary custody and care of the child until the parent’s condition improves. Conversely, if a remediable disorder is not identified, if treatment is not successful, or if the child likely will remain at substantial risk despite treatment, termination is proper.2
Thus, where grounds for termination are attributable to a parent’s physical or mental ailment, a court should determine whether reasonable efforts have been undertaken to restore the parent’s health. In the case of a mental disorder, psychiatric or psychological assistance should be made available if it is obviously warranted. See In the Matter of the L. Children, 131 Misc.2d 81, 499 N.Y.S.2d 587 (N.Y.Fam.Ct.1986) (a case, like the one before us, involving a mildly retarded mother). The New York Court of Appeals has recognized that state agencies are responsible for seeing that family preservation is truly attempted before termination is sought:
[T]o enable a child to return to his or her family, an agency must have the capability to diagnose the problems of the parent and of the child; access to a host of concrete supportive and rehabilitative services; cooperation with community treatment programs (such as health, alcohol, and drug treatment); and a casework staff that can motivate the parents to avail themselves of services____ Lower courts have recognized that an agency is in a superior position to the parent with respect to the planning factor. The parties are by no means dealing on an equal basis. The parent is by definition saddled with problems: economic, physical, sociological, psychiatric, or any combination thereof. The agency, in contrast, is vested with expertise, experience, capital, manpower and prestige. Agency efforts correlative to their superiority [are] obligatory____ The corollary to the agency’s dominant position is that indifference by the agency may greatly serve to impede a parent’s attempts at reunification____ Of course, transcending the practical reasons for providing a threshold requirement that an agency exercise diligent efforts toward reuniting parent and child is the strong public policy that before the State may terminate parents’ rights it must first attempt to strengthen familial ties____ Retention of the diligent effort requirement reflects] a sound societal value in addition to considerations of fundamental equity, if not constitutional rights, that the State should exercise reasonable efforts to restore familial relationships before seeking to terminate them.
Matter of Sheila G, 61 N.Y.2d 368, 474 N.Y.S.2d 421, 434-36, 462 N.E.2d 1139, 1152-54 (1984).
The requirement that reasonable efforts be directed toward alleviating a parent’s mental disorder does not mean the state must provide long-term psychiatric or psychological services in all termination cases. Not every instance of bad parenting is attributable to a mental disorder. The reasonable efforts requirement is triggered only if a disorder is identified; the disorder is remediable within a reasonable time; and it appears that the child will not continue to be at substantial risk during or after treatment. If these criteria are satisfied, the court should order appropriate treatment *907while the child’s interim needs are met under the Child Protective Act. If the treatment proves unavailing, the policy of strengthening and preserving family life has been satisfied by the reasonable efforts made. Termination then may be ordered in the best interests of the child.
In this case, the mother raised the reasonable efforts issue in the magistrate division and again in the district court. She asserted that her parenting deficiencies were due to relations with destructive and abusive men. She claimed that the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare should have provided intensive psychotherapeutic treatment to help her deal with low self-esteem and related emotional problems. The Department’s social workers, who testified at the hearing on the termination petition, acknowledged that the mother’s parenting inadequacies were causally related to her inability to avoid harmful men. The social workers professed no expertise in dealing with this underlying problem. No psychotherapy was provided.
However, the record further indicates that the mother received a psychological evaluation while the Department was providing family services under the Child Protective Act. The mother’s attorney did not call the psychologist to testify at the termination hearing. Neither did counsel move the court to order an updated evaluation. On appeal, it has not been argued that the evaluation disclosed any particular mental disorder other than mild retardation. Consequently, the record contains no basis to find that the mother suffers from an identifiable and remediable mental condition. It also is devoid of any basis to find that the children in question would be free from substantial continuing risk even if psychological or psychiatric services were furnished. Accordingly, I conclude that the factual predicate for triggering a reasonable efforts requirement has not been established in this case. For that reason I concur in today’s decision upholding the decree of termination.

. Several forms of parental unfitness are enumerated as grounds for termination by I.C. § 16-2005. Subsection (a) relates to abandonment of the child; subsection (b) refers to neglect or abuse of the child; and subsection (d) pertains to mental illness or deficiency of the parent. The remaining subsections set forth termination grounds other than parental unfitness. Subsection (c) deals with a presumptive parent who is shown actually not to be the child’s natural parent; subsection (e) refers broadly to the "best interest of the parent and child;’’ and subsection (f) relates to consensual termination. The precise meaning of subsection (e) and its constitutionality in light of Santosky have not yet been addressed by the appellate courts of this state.

. Termination may have an adverse impact on the parent’s mental health. However, termination decisions do not turn on the best interests of the parent unless termination is sought under I.C. § 16-2005(e). Hofmeister v. Bauer, supra. Where termination is sought on any other statutory ground, the child’s best interests are controlling. The policy of strengthening and preserving family life is anchored in the assumption that children’s best interests are served by their natural parents. This policy does not protect parents from the unhappy consequences of termination where the children’s needs are not, in fact, being met.