In the Interest of A.H., Minor Child

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-1534 Filed December 18, 2024

IN THE INTEREST OF A.H., Minor Child,

B.H., Mother, Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Jones County, Joan M. Black, Judge.

A mother appeals the juvenile court’s order terminating her parental rights

to her child. AFFIRMED.

Robin L. Himes, Linn County Advocate, Cedar Rapids, for appellant mother.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Lisa Jeanes, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

David G. Baumgartner, Strawberry Point, attorney and guardian ad litem for

minor child.

Considered by Tabor, C.J., and Ahlers and Sandy, JJ. 2

AHLERS, Judge.

This family was on the radar of the Iowa Department of Health and Human

Services due to events occurring in late July 2022. Those events involved the

mother punching her ex-boyfriend while in the presence of her child (born in 2018)

and then, after consuming significant amounts of alcohol, driving with the child in

her vehicle and threatening to drive the car into a ditch to kill them both.

While these events were being investigated, juvenile court involvement

became necessary in August when the mother, who was driving with the child in

the car, was involved in a head-on collision. Medical staff at the local emergency

room requested to transport the injured child to University of Iowa Hospitals and

Clinics (UIHC). The mother—observed by hospital staff to be exhibiting signs of

methamphetamine use—refused to authorize transport or medical care for the

child. The mother was escorted from the hospital by law enforcement after she

threatened to punch hospital staff in the face. The child was flown to UIHC by an

air ambulance. When the mother arrived at UIHC, she was contacted by a worker

from the department. The mother, referring to staff at the local hospital, expressed

regret at not having assaulted the staff, saying, “I should have punched that bitch

when I had the chance.” Subsequent drug testing revealed that the mother was

positive for methamphetamine and marijuana, and the child tested positive for

methamphetamine.

The August events resulted in a founded child abuse assessment against

the mother. They also caused the juvenile court to remove the child from the

parents’ custody and grant custody to the department. The department placed the 3

child with the child’s maternal aunt. The juvenile court adjudicated the child as in

need of assistance (CINA).

As the CINA case progressed, the juvenile court authorized two separate

trial-home visits with the mother. Both were terminated prematurely—one in April

2023 due to illegal drugs found in the mother’s residence1 and the other in October

due to the mother striking the child in the face as a form of discipline. Sandwiched

between the two trial-home visits was a permanency order giving the mother an

additional six months to work toward reunification. See Iowa Code § 232.104(2)(b)

(2022).

After the second trial-home visit failed, the mother again tested positive for

methamphetamine, at which point she stopped submitting to drug testing for

several months. The State filed a petition seeking to terminate the parents’

parental rights. After the termination trial was completed in February 2024, the

juvenile court twice reopened the record at the mother’s request and held

additional hearings in April and July. Following the three hearings, the juvenile

court terminated the parents’ rights to the child. Only the mother appeals.

I. Standard and Process of Review

We review orders terminating parental rights de novo. In re Z.K., 973

N.W.2d 27, 32 (Iowa 2022). Our review follows a three-step process of

determining (1) whether a statutory ground for termination has been established,

(2) whether termination is in a child’s best interests, and (3) whether a permissive

1 Drug testing of the child after the termination of the first trial-home visit showed

the child testing positive for THC metabolites. These events resulted in two additional founded child abuse assessments against the mother. 4

exception should be applied to preclude termination. In re A.B., 957 N.W.2d 280,

294 (Iowa 2021). We do not address any step not challenged by a parent. In re

P.L., 778 N.W.2d 33, 40 (Iowa 2010).

The mother purports to challenge all three steps. However, because her

challenge to the second and third steps are intertwined such that it is based entirely

on the third step, we limit our discussion on that part of her challenge to the third

step. As a result, we address the first and third steps only.2

II. Statutory Grounds

The juvenile court terminated the mother’s parental rights under Iowa Code

section 232.116(1)(f). Termination is permitted under that ground upon clear and

convincing proof that the child (1) is at least four years old, (2) has been

adjudicated CINA, (3) has been removed from the parent’s custody “for at least

twelve of the last eighteen months, or for the last twelve consecutive months and

any trial period at home has been less than thirty days,” and (4) the child cannot

be safely returned to the parent’s custody at the time of the termination hearing.

Iowa Code § 232.116(1)(f); see also In re A.M., 843 N.W.2d 100, 112 (Iowa 2014)

(defining “at the present time” to mean at the time of the termination trial). The

mother challenges only the fourth element.

After our de novo review, we agree with the juvenile court that the child

could not be returned to the mother’s custody. To the mother’s credit, she had

2 Although the mother makes a passing reference to requesting additional time to

work toward reunification in her petition on appeal, she cited no authority and made no substantive argument in support of this claim, so we deem the issue waived. See Iowa R. App. P. 6.903(2)(a)(8)(3); In re B.D., No. 23-0105, 2023 WL 2671958, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 29, 2023) (concluding sprinkled references to issues without properly identifying and developing them waives the issues). 5

stable housing and consistent employment, and she had also largely addressed

her substance-use issues. But concerns remained.

The concerns included the mother’s refusal to be accountable for the

family’s situation. For example, despite multiple positive tests for

methamphetamine, the mother adamantly claimed she’d never used

methamphetamine in her life, but she had no credible explanation for why she and

the child tested positive for the drug. As another troubling example, the mother

continued to blame others for the removal of the child. This included blaming the

child for reporting the physical abuse that caused the second trial-home visit to

end. The mother not only expressed this blame to the department and the juvenile

court, but directly to the child during supervised visits. The mother told the child,

“Because you fucking lied and got your wish. You get to live with [your aunt] now.”

The mother went on to tell the child that the child had lied and that “no one hit her

in [the] fucking face.” Another time, after the mother tapped the child on the bottom

during a visit, the child complained that the mother had spanked her. In response,

the mother said, “I tapped you. Don’t exaggerate. That’s why we are in this

situation we are fucking in.”

Concerns also included the mother repeatedly yelling and cursing at the

child during visits. The mother also regularly engaged in discussions of improper

topics with the child during visits. She told the child the department workers were

“terminating” the mother and that they weren’t allowed to have others at visits

because the workers didn’t want them to have any fun. The mother referred to the

child’s father by a derogatory, profanity-laced name. 6

The mother also bad-mouthed the child’s aunt with whom the child is

placed. The mother framed the issue to the child as there are sides—meaning

either the mother’s or the aunt’s side—and the child has to decide which one the

child is on. This has distressed the child and caused her to try to defend the aunt.

Concerns also swirl around the mother’s choice of romantic partners. The

mother has a history of being involved with men with significant criminal issues,

substance-use issues, or both, and she has been less than forthcoming about

those relationships. During the course of the CINA case, the mother began dating

a man on the sex-offender registry for a crime against a child. To her credit, when

the relationship was finally discovered by the department and the man’s sex

offense was pointed out to the mother, she ended the relationship. But the fact

remains that it took the efforts of others to vet her paramour, which does not inspire

confidence in the mother’s ability to provide a safe environment for the child if the

mother is left unsupervised.

The mother has also been manipulative and cagey about a new man in her

life—a man who lives in her apartment complex and has children of his own. The

mother hid the relationship from the department and the juvenile court for many

months. While still hiding the relationship and knowing she could not have others

at visits, especially individuals who had not been subject to a background check,

the mother arranged for the man and his children to be playing at the park at the

same time she had visits with the child in the park so the mother and child could

interact with him.

When the relationship was finally discovered, the department’s preliminary

background check of the man uncovered concerns. The concerns included a 7

history of substance use and domestic violence, so the department requested that

he submit to a drug test. Before the department could arrange the test, the mother

informed the department that she and the man were no longer in a relationship, so

the department canceled the test.

The report that the mother and the man had broken up turned out not to be

true. The mother testified at the final day of the termination trial that the man was

her fiancé and they had been dating for nine months—a period that covered when

the man was appearing at visitation without a background check, when she

testified at the first day of trial that she was not dating anybody, and when his drug

test was canceled after she told the department they were no longer in a

relationship. It also came out that the man had been introduced to the child as the

mother’s fiancé and that the mother and child would be moving in with him.

The record establishes that the mother made progress in reducing the

number of times she cursed and yelled at the child during visits, and we give her

credit for that progress. But we cannot ignore the negative impact the mother’s

overall conduct has had and continues to have on the child. When supervision of

visits was relaxed or the mother received increased time with the child, the child’s

negative behaviors increased. The child has confided in department workers that

she feels guilty about her removal from the mother’s home. The juvenile court

appropriately concluded that the child has nothing to feel guilty about but does so

because of the inappropriate comments the mother has repeatedly made to her.

Following our de novo review of the record, we agree with the department’s

decision to not permit the mother to move past fully-supervised visits. The

mother’s inability to progress beyond fully-supervised visits means the child cannot 8

be returned to her custody. See In re S.L., No. 19-0107, 2019 WL 1055689, at *2

(Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 6, 2019) (finding a child cannot be returned to a parent’s

custody when the parent has failed to progress past fully supervised visits); see

also In re J.H., 952 N.W.2d 157, 170 (Iowa 2020) (“[T]here is a substantial

difference between meeting a child’s needs under the supervision and guidance

of other people and being able to independently care for a child . . . .”). The

mother’s continued failure to accept responsibility for the child’s removal, her

continued placing of blame on the child’s shoulders, her undermining of the

department’s efforts, and her manipulation of the department in efforts to bring a

potentially unsafe person into her child’s life convinces us that returning the child

to the mother’s custody would subject the child to additional emotional and mental

injury or trauma. See Iowa Code § 232.96A(3)(a) (defining a child in need of

assistance to include a child who is imminently likely to suffer harmful effects as a

result of mental injury caused by the acts of the child’s parents); see also In re

M.M.-P., No. 24-1279, 2024 WL 4502878, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 16, 2024)

(holding a child cannot be returned to a parent’s custody if doing so would expose

the child to “any harm amounting to a new child in need of assistance adjudication

or without remaining a child in need of assistance” (quoting In re S.C., No. 15-

0262, 2015 WL 2089743, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. May 6, 2015))). We conclude the

State established statutory grounds for termination of the mother’s parental rights.

III. Permissive Exception—Closeness of Parent-Child Relationship

When statutory grounds for termination exist, the juvenile court can still

decline to terminate parental rights if it finds one of the exceptions in Iowa Code

section 232.116(3) applies. Application of one of the exceptions is permissive, not 9

mandatory, and the parent claiming the exception has the burden to prove

applicability of the exception. In re A.S., 906 N.W.2d 467, 475–76 (Iowa 2018).

The mother asserts the exception in section 232.116(3)(c) should be

applied to avoid termination. That exception permits the court to deny termination

when the parent presents clear and convincing evidence “that termination would

be detrimental to the child at the time due to the closeness of the parent-child

relationship.” Iowa Code § 232.116(3)(c).

There is no dispute that the mother loves the child and there is a strong

bond between the two. There is competing evidence as to whether severance of

that close bond by termination would be detrimental to the child. After our de novo

review, we conclude that the child’s need for stability—which is being provided in

her current placement—outweighs any harm that may result from termination of

the mother’s rights. We echo the juvenile court’s conclusion that

any potential harm to the child from the loss of her parents will be ameliorated by placement in a safe, loving, permanent adoptive family. In fact, the harm for this child would be if she were removed from her current placement and deprived of the stability that has been provided to her.

The mother has failed to establish a permissive exception to termination.

IV. Conclusion

As the State established statutory grounds for termination, and the mother

failed to meet her burden of establishing that a permissive exception to termination

should be applied, we affirm the juvenile court’s decision to terminate the mother’s

parental rights.

AFFIRMED.