Termination of Parental Rights

Definition

When parental rights are terminated, the legal parents' statutory ties to the child are completely dissolved. All rights of the parents to visit, communicate with, make decisions for or about the child, and to obtain information about the child are eliminated. The parents also no longer have any legal responsibility to care for the child medically, physically, emotionally, mentally, or financially. The child becomes the responsibility or ward of the state and is cared for by child welfare agencies through foster care. The goal of the child welfare agencies and the juvenile court shifts from reunification of the child with the biological or legal family to the child's placement with and/or adoption by a new family.

The termination of parental rights may be voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary TPRs happen when the biological or legal parents choose to place their children into the custody of the state and to sever their legal responsibilities to those children. A parent may do this by contacting the local child and family services department or the juvenile court and asking that the child be removed from the home. The parent may then verbally ask that a petition be filed in the juvenile court to terminate parental rights. A parent may also voluntarily terminate his or her parental rights by contacting a private adoption agency and following the agency's procedures for TPR. The private agency will work with the juvenile court to petition for a TPR hearing. In either circumstance, the parent will be required to appear in juvenile court while the court listens to the evidence presented and decides if TPR is in the best interest of the child.

Involuntary TPRs are much more problematic. They typically take place because of abuse or neglect issues and include lengthy involvements by [Page 952]juvenile courts and agencies providing child and family services. An involuntary TPR may take place if a child welfare agency has made all reasonable efforts to preserve the family and has determined that reuniting the child with the biological or legal family is impossible. Reunification may be impossible if the parent refuses to work with the child welfare agency, when the problems leading up to the child's removal are not curable, and when intensive in-home services cannot be provided or are provided and fail. Federal guidelines require that an involuntary TPR take place if a child has spent 15 of the previous 22 months in foster care. Involuntary TPR is also necessary when a child is subjected to aggravating circumstances such as torture or chronic or severe abuse, when a parent's parental rights over another child have been involuntarily terminated, when a parent has killed or tried to kill another child, or when the court finds that a child is an abandoned infant.

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