Court Opinion

ID: 9761753
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:53:16.121113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:26.028024
License: Public Domain

BREWER, C. J.,
concurring.
I agree with and join in the majority opinion in this case. I write separately to emphasize my understanding of the role that the pleadings play in relation to the court’s function in a proceeding for termination of parental rights based on a parent’s alleged unfitness under ORS 419B.504.
A proceeding for termination of parental rights, unlike other civil actions, is initiated in a preexisting juvenile *142court action where multiple underlying proceedings have already been held. However, like in other civil actions, the petition in a termination action is a formal pleading in the nature of a complaint that initiates a discrete legal proceeding. The petitioner is required to file an initiating petition for termination of parental rights that, consistently with ORCP 18 A, sets out one or more claims that contain “[a] plain and concise statement of the ultimate facts constituting a claim for relief without unnecessary repetition.” What that typically means for purposes of a claim under ORS 419B.504, is that the petition will allege one or more grounds of unfitness under subsections (1) through (6) of the statute. The petition ordinarily will not include allegations under a subsection of the statute upon which the petitioner does not intend to rely. So, for example, it is often the case that the state will rely on one or more, but not all, of subsections (1) through (4) or (6) in alleging the particular conduct or condition of a parent that makes the parent unfit. The state also routinely relies on subsection (5) of the statute when it wishes to assert that the parent has failed to make a lasting adjustment so as to make it possible for the child to return to the parent’s home. However, the petition need not rely on subsection (5) as a ground of unfitness.
The question arises, then, as to what role subsection (5) plays when a petition does not rely on that subsection as a ground of unfitness. Under the statute, a parent may place subsection (5) in play if the parent believes that the Department of Human Services has failed to make reasonable efforts to reunify the family. The preface to the statute requires the court to consider all pertinent subsections of the statute in determining whether, due to “conduct or conditions not likely to change,” “integration of the child or ward into the home of the parent or parents is improbable within a reasonable time.” It follows that, if a parent contends that integration of the child into the parent’s home within a reasonable time is not improbable because a lasting adjustment could be effected by reasonable efforts that the Department of Human Services has so far failed to make, the court must consider that issue even if the state has not alleged a basis for termination under subsection (5).
*143By this I do not mean to suggest that the parent in such a circumstance bears the burden of proving a negative under subsection (5). It remains the state’s obligation to plead and prove that integration is improbable in the terms of the statute. My point is a limited one: The parent may raise the issue of a lack of reasonable efforts in contesting the state’s assertion of the improbability of integration into the parent’s home within a reasonable time. As the majority correctly observes, when the issue is so joined, no single factor is controlling. In determining whether (1) a parent’s conduct or condition has rendered the parent unfit in the statutory sense; and (2) integration within a reasonable time is improbable, the court must consider the totality of pertinent circumstances. In that regard, the grounds set out in subsections (1) through (6) are neither exclusive nor are they severally essential to a judgment of termination under ORS 419B.504. In my view, the majority has properly applied that understanding of the statute to affirm the judgment of termination in this case.