TN Dad Loses Parental Rights for 8 Yr Abandonment

Tennessee law case summary on termination of parental rights in family law from the Court of Appeals.

In re Kiara C. – Tennessee parental rights termination.

Mark C. and Pamela B. were both serving in the U.S. Army in El Paso, Texas, at the time of their 2001 marriage.  In May, 2002, their daughter, Kiara C., was born.  After their discharge from the Army, they moved to Illinois.  At some point, Pamela sought an order for protection from an Illinois court, and Mark was granted supervised visitation.  He visited Kiara twice under this order, and the parents were divorced in Illinois in 2004.  Under the Illinois divorce decree, the father was denied further visitation without order of the court.  The father left Illinois and left no forwarding address.  The mother heard from him only once, when he sent the daughter a 2004 Easter card containing some loose coins.

In 2012, the mother sent the father a Facebook message asking whether he would be willing to surrender his parental rights.  He said that he would not, but he made no effort to arrange visitation.  The father was living in New York at that time.

The mother had remarried in 2006, and later moved to North Carolina and then Seymour, Tennessee.  She and her new husband had two children together and were expecting a third.  In 2012, the mother and stepfather filed a petition in Blount County, Tennessee, to terminate the father’s parental rights so that the stepfather could adopt Kiara.

The Blount County court ordered the father to appear at a deposition.  His attorney appeared at the scheduled time, but the father failed to appear or offer a reason for his absence.

A trial was held, and the trial court determined by clear and convincing evidence that the father had abandoned the child by failing to visit or provide support.  It further held that it was in the child’s best interest to terminate parental rights, and issued an order doing so.  The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The appeals court first noted that the trial court is reviewed de novo, and must be upheld unless the evidence preponderates against the lower court’s findings.  There are constitutional dimensions to the case, but parental rights can be terminated if there is clear and convincing evidence supporting termination.

The appeals court then turned to the Tennessee statute addressing abandonment in order to determine whether those tests had been met in this case.  The appeals court agreed that there had been abandonment, and that it was willful in this case.

The father argued that the failure to visit was because of the Illinois court order.  But the appeals court agreed with the lower court that the father could have asked the Illinois court to modify this portion of the order, but failed to do so.

The father also pointed to the order for protection, but the appeals court pointed out that this order had expired in 2004.

And even though there was no order setting the amount of support, the appeals court agreed with the lower court that “any parent knows that he or she owes a duty of support to the child” and that the father has “never provided a nickel, not a dime, not a penny.”

Finally, the appeals court examined the best interests of the child and also agreed that the evidence supported the lower court’s decision.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling, and assessed the costs of appeal against the father.

No. No. E2013-02066-COA-R3-PT (Tenn. Ct. App. Jun. 30, 2014).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.