In Re KY

273 S.W.3d 703, 2008 WL 4809548
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedNovember 6, 2008
Docket14-07-00866-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 273 S.W.3d 703 (In Re KY) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re KY, 273 S.W.3d 703, 2008 WL 4809548 (Tex. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

273 S.W.3d 703 (2008)

In the Interest of K.Y. and K.Y., Minor Children.

No. 14-07-00866-CV.

Court of Appeals of Texas, Houston (14th Dist.).

November 6, 2008.

*705 Kim Richardson, Freeport and Shayna Lynn Rosen Taibel, Angleton, TX, for appellants.

Jeri Yenne and Erinn Genelle Brown, Angleton, TX, for appellees.

Panel consists of Justices YATES, GUZMAN, and BROWN.

OPINION

LESLIE B. YATES, Justice.

Appellant J.Y. appeals from a judgment terminating his parental rights to his minor children, K.Y. and K.Y. In five issues, appellant argues that appellee the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) failed to allege new facts when it refiled the termination suit against him and that the trial court lacked jurisdiction, failed to join a necessary party, and erred in admitting autopsy photographs of appellant's stepdaughter, whom he was convicted of murdering. We affirm.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

In 1999, B.F. and her daughter by a previous relationship, A.F., began living with appellant. During the six years that they lived together, appellant and B.F. had two children together, K.Y. and K.Y. B.F. testified at trial that although appellant never harmed K.Y. and K.Y., he mistreated A.F. Apparently believing her to be possessed by the devil, appellant called A.F. derogatory names and forced her to copy hundreds of pages from the Bible while standing up. Appellant would not allow A.F. to eat with the family and allowed her to eat only one meal per day, usually consisting of beans and sardines, which he forced her to eat quickly. Appellant required A.F. to stay in her room and not interact with the rest of the family. He was often physically abusive to A.F., including whipping her buttocks to the point of bleeding and hitting her repeatedly all over her body, including her head and abdomen.

A.F. died in December of 2003, at the age of twelve. B.F. testified that A.F. had not been feeling well that day. That evening, appellant went into A.F.'s room, and B.F. heard mumbling and some thumps. *706 Appellant then came out and told B.F. not to panic and that A.F. was not breathing. Appellant packed some belongings and left the house, taking all the phones with him. Several hours later, B.F. called 911, and A.F. was dead when emergency personnel arrived. Appellant was arrested shortly thereafter. According to the chief medical examiner, A.F. died as a result of multiple blunt force trauma, with the contributory cause of death being chronic child abuse. A.F. was severely malnourished and emaciated, several of her internal organs had been damaged, she had multiple layers of scarring on her buttocks, and she was bruised literally from head to toe.

After being notified that the cause of A.F.'s death was chronic child abuse, DFPS removed K.Y. and K.Y. from the home. They were placed with a foster family, with whom they have lived since and who want to adopt them. On December 30, 2003, DFPS filed an original petition seeking conservatorship of the children and termination of both parents' parental rights. On April 19, 2005, B.F. voluntarily relinquished her parental rights to the children. On June 21, 2005, the district court dismissed the remaining claims against appellant without prejudice. DFPS refiled the suit to terminate appellant's parental rights on June 22, 2005. In October 2005, appellant was convicted of murdering A.F. and sentenced to life in prison.[1] On September 14, 2006, the second termination suit against appellant was dismissed without prejudice. On September 15, 2006, DFPS filed suit for a third time to terminate appellant's parental rights. The case proceeded to trial in February 2007, and a jury determined that termination of appellant's parental rights was warranted and in the children's best interest. This appeal followed.

II. Jurisdiction

A. Home State Jurisdiction

In his second issue, for the first time on appeal, appellant challenges the trial court's subject matter jurisdiction. He argues that the trial court lacked jurisdiction because the children moved to Oklahoma and thus Texas was no longer their home state. Subject matter jurisdiction is a question of law, to which we apply a de novo standard of review. Tex. Dep't of Parks & Wildlife v. Miranda, 133 S.W.3d 217, 226 (Tex.2004); Salaymeh v. Plaza Centro, LLC, 264 S.W.3d 431, 435 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2008, no pet. h.). Subject matter jurisdiction may be raised for the first time on appeal. Salaymeh, 264 S.W.3d 431, 435.

Section 152.201(a)(1) of the Family Code provides that a Texas court has jurisdiction to make an initial child custody determination if Texas is the home state of the child on the date of the commencement of the proceeding or was the home state of the child within six months before the commencement of the proceeding and the child is absent from Texas but a parent or person acting as a parent continues to live in Texas. TEX. FAM.CODE ANN. § 152.201(a)(1) (Vernon 2002). "Home state" means the state in which a child lived with a parent or a person acting as a parent for at least six consecutive months immediately before the commencement of a child custody proceeding. Id. § 152.102(7). At all times during this proceeding, the children's parents lived in Texas. Thus, the central question is whether Texas was the children's home state on the date of, or within six months before, commencement of this proceeding. See In re Burk, 252 S.W.3d 736, 740 (Tex. App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 2008, orig. proceeding [mand. denied]).

*707 DFPS filed the third suit to terminate appellant's parental rights on September 15, 2006. Appellant claims the children moved to Oklahoma a year earlier, meaning Texas could not have been their home state, but this is not supported by the record. The children were born and lived in Texas until May of 2006. Their foster father moved to Oklahoma during the fall or winter of 2005. However, the children and their foster mother continued to live in Texas for several more months, and they visited Oklahoma on a monthly basis until May 2006 when the family obtained permission from DFPS to permanently move to Oklahoma. Appellant insists that the whole family actually moved together and that the Texas residence was merely a fiction. There is no evidence in the record to support such a claim. The only evidence shows that the foster mother and the children maintained their house and possessions in Texas and lived in Texas, with frequent visits to Oklahoma, until May 2006. Such visits do not establish that the children moved from Texas, thereby creating gaps in the six month home state jurisdiction time frame. See In re Schoeffel, 268 Ill.App.3d 839, 206 Ill.Dec. 59, 644 N.E.2d 827, 830 (1994) (stating that brief interstate visits by child do not defeat home state jurisdiction); In re Brown, 203 S.W.3d 888, 892-93 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2006, no pet.) (finding Missouri, not Texas, was child's home state, despite several short visits to Texas during six months before proceeding); cf. Powell v. Stover,

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273 S.W.3d 703, 2008 WL 4809548, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-ky-texapp-2008.