State ex rel. Department of Human Services v. Smith

These two parental rights termination cases, which we have consolidated for opinion, test the bounds of a state agency’s authority to exact a parent’s compliance with various conditions in order to secure the return of her child. In the present cases, we hold that the agency exceeded those bounds.

The trial court terminated mother’s parental rights to her first son, whom the state had removed from mother’s care at birth. The court’s order recited the statutory criteria for termination upon a finding of unfitness, but it did not elaborate. In a brief, per curiam opinion, the Court of Appeals,…