EBH v. Hot Springs Department of Family Services

2001 WY 100, 33 P.3d 172, 2001 Wyo. LEXIS 120
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 18, 2001
DocketNo. C-00-12
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 2001 WY 100 (EBH v. Hot Springs Department of Family Services) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
EBH v. Hot Springs Department of Family Services, 2001 WY 100, 33 P.3d 172, 2001 Wyo. LEXIS 120 (Wyo. 2001).

Opinion

HILL, Justice.

[¶ 1] EBH appeals a district court order terminating his parental rights We conclude that the district court's decision was supported by clear and convincing evidence, and EBH was provided with due process. Accordingly, the district court's decision terminating EBH's parental rights is affirmed.

[¶ 2] Appellant EBH sets out four issues for consideration:

1. Did the District Court err when it terminated [EBH's] parental rights when the petition to terminate parental rights did not contain incidents of abuse or neglect by [EBH] and the termination relied on lack of support and lack of communication theories?
2. Was [EBH] denied due process when the Wyoming Department of Family Services failed to provide a clear statement of the consequences of [EBH's] failure to bring a child support obligation current?
3. Was [EBH] denied due process when the Wyoming Department of Family Services did not inform [EBH] of its decision to change the goal of family reunification to long term foster care or adoption?
4. - Did the Wyoming Department of Family Services fail to follow its own rules when the agency changed its goal from family reunification to long term foster care/adoption _ without _ informing [EBH] and when the agency did not seek alternative foster placement in [EBH's] state of residence in Idaho?

The Department of Family Services (DFS) condenses the matter to a single issue:

Whether the district court's finding that appellant's parental rights to IH should be terminated was established by clear and convincing evidence?

FACTS

[¶ 3] The Petition to Terminate Parental Rights was filed on August 18, 1998. The' State's petition alleged three grounds for termination:

10. That both children are neglected by [CP] and [EBH] and efforts by the Wyoming Department of Family Services have been unsuccessful in rehabilitating the family and/or [CP] and [EBH] have refused rehabilitation treatment by failing to comply with the Juvenile Court Multi-Disciplinary Assessment Team's recommendations to comply with requirements contained within the Juvenile Court Order.
11. That both children have been left in the care of another person, i.e., the Wyoming Department of Family Services, without provision for the children's support and without communication from the absent parent for a period of at least one (1) year, disregarding incidental contacts.
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15. That [the children] have been in foster care for 22 of the last 22 months.

A four-day bench trial on the petition was held from December 18-16, 1999. The State presented evidence through DFS employees and caseworkers, the Idaho caseworker who completed the 1999 home study, and two of IH's teachers. The State also offered the deposition testimony of the psychologist who evaluated the children and their parents in 1995, along with the reports detailing those evaluations.1 EBH countered with evidence from an expert psychology witness and his own testimony.

[¶ 4] In 1991, EBH and CP had a son, IH. CP also had a daughter from another relationship.2 In April of 1995, CP moved [176]*176from Boise, Idaho to Thermopolis, Wyoming with her daughter and son. In May, the Department of Family Services began investigating reports of neglect and lack of supervision. The reports alleged that CP was leaving the children alone in her apartment and having someone drop by to check on them. CP would also leave her children with neighbors and disappear for long periods of time. At the time, CP was drinking heavily. On June 2, 1995, CP was placed in emergency detention after threatening suicide. On June 10, CP was arrested for public intoxication. Her arrest led to the discovery that CP had left the children with an intoxicated acquaintance. The children were taken into protective custody that evening and placed with a foster family. Based on the events of June 10, DFS substantiated general neglect on June 12.

[¶ 5] On September 27, 1995, DFS substantiated psychological and emotional ne-gleet of the children:3 The substantiation was based on the case history and a psychological evaluation of the children and their parents. The psychologist who examined IH concluded that he was "a severely delayed, presently Mildly Mentally Retarded youngster with especially profound expressive language and verbal reasoning skill deficits, who appears to come from a background deficient in basic psychosocial nurturance and academically-related and intellectually-related stimulation." The psychologist warned:

Without intensive remediation for his developmental delays and his psychosocial deficits coupled with intensive family intervention to restore him to some form of safe, stable, consistent household environment, this youngster will grow up to have grave, even debilitating adaptive or life-skill deficits, and may well be on his way already to developing an abusive, explosive or excessively aggressive and dysfunctional personality style.

IH's preschool teacher noted that he would approach total strangers, hug them, and tell them that he loved them. Later, the Director of Special Services for Hot Springs School District No. 1 indicated that IH's cognitive abilities and IQ scores had improved substantially by 1998.

[¶ 6] IH's father, EBH, has a long history of criminal activity, including convictions for grand larceny, first degree burglary, and domestic violence. EBH also has an extensive history of abusing drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, and methamphetamine. - The State's psychiatrist examined EBH shortly after TH was taken into protective custody in 1995 and reached the following conclusions:

The results of this evaluation suggested [EBH] to be a grossly disturbed, characte-rologically fixated man of average overall intellect who may have signs of clinical hyperthyroidism, but more likely suffers from the residual affects [sic] of long-term injectable amphetamine abuse-with a strong hint of dependency continuing into the future ... [.] ... [Hle appears to be grossly self-centered and grandiose in his self-assessments, to be highly unrealistic in terms of evaluating himself as a social entity, and to have the marks of primary psychopathy that often are found in convict populations ... [.] ... There appear to be several areas of functional deficit for this gentleman that could gravely interfere with his ability to serve as a proper, facilitative, optimally-healthy parent figure: his odd, schizotypal thinking and interactive style; his vulnerability to resumed amphetamine abuse; his vulnerability to resumed criminality (and consequent possible return to prison); his history of failure to comply with probation, leading again to a return to prison on several occasions; and most immediately, his admitted discomfort in discharging the parenting duties of a single male parent for a toddler.
This examiner could not in good conscience recommend this gentleman as the primary custodial parent at this point.

The State's psychiatrist suggested a long-term treatment plan for EBH that included [177]

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Bluebook (online)
2001 WY 100, 33 P.3d 172, 2001 Wyo. LEXIS 120, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ebh-v-hot-springs-department-of-family-services-wyo-2001.