All You Need To Know About When Does A Father Lose Parental Rights And More

Individuals can have their legal parenting rights taken away by the courts. Involuntary termination of parental rights can occur when the parents break specific laws that place their children in danger or are considered a threat to the health and safety of the child. This dismissed the idea of when does a father lose parental rights. 

 

If someone threatens to take away your parenting rights, you should talk to a family law attorney who can help protect your family and defend your rights.

Terminating Parents Rights

In most cases, petitions to terminate parental rights are filed against parents in cases of alleged abuse, neglect, or drug and alcohol dependency. This usually involves the County Department of Social Services (DSS) filing a petition after a parent is suspected of abuse or neglect.

 

A parent can also file a petition to terminate the parental rights of the other parent. This can involve parents who are separated or where one parent abandons the child. 

 

The legal guardian can also petition to terminate parenting rights, as can any person who filed a petition for adoption or any person who has lived with the child for a period of two or more years.

 

Reasons To Terminate Father’s Rights

 

Termination of parental rights is a severe action. It requires showing the petition meets the grounds for termination, and termination of parental rights is in the child’s best interest. Grounds for termination include:

 

• Abuse or neglect of the child
• Leaving a child in foster care for more than a year
• Failure to pay child support
• Loss of a father to establish paternity
• Dependency
• Terminated parenting rights of another child

 

Even after establishing that the grounds exist to terminate a parent's rights, the court still considers the child’s best interests in deciding whether to remove the parent's rights.

Abuse Or Neglect 

A petition to terminate a father's rights to his child can be filed immediately after allegations of abuse or neglect or based on prior incidents of abuse. 

 

When a parent is facing allegations of severe abuse or neglect, the court may issue a ruling at that time that reunification efforts would be futile, and the court should pursue actions to terminate the parent's rights.

 

Alternatively, a petition to terminate parental rights can be based on prior adjudications of abuse or neglect. The court will examine the previous incidents and whether there have been changed circumstances since that time to determine whether there is a probability of repeated abuse or neglect in the future. 

 

Based on this determination and what is in the child’s best interests, the court will decide to terminate the parent's rights.

 

Foster Care For More Than 1 Year

Leaving a child in foster care or placing the child outside the home for more than 12 months without showing progress in correcting the conditions that led to the child's removal may be grounds for terminating parental rights. 

 

However, if the only reason for placing the child in foster care is poverty, that alone is not a basis for terminating parental rights.

 

Enable To Pay For Child Support

When one parent has custody of a child (under a court order or divorce agreement), and the other parent has willfully failed to pay child support, the parent with custody can petition to terminate the other parent's rights. 

 

The court can terminate the parent’s rights without providing child support, care, or education as required by the court order for one year or more.

 

Alternatively, placing the child in the custody of DSS or foster home and failure to pay a reasonable portion of the child's care for at least six continuous months (where the parent is physically and financially able to provide support) may be grounds for terminating parental rights. 

 

Failure To Establish Paternity

When a child is born out of wedlock, the father can terminate his parental rights if the father fails to establish paternity, legitimate the child by petition or marriage, or provides financial support and care to the child and mother.

 

Dependency

Terminating parental rights based on dependency involves the parent is incapable of providing care or supervision for the child, where the child is considered a “dependent juvenile.” 

 

This may include parents who are incapacitated through mental illness or due to drug or alcohol abuse, where there is a detrimental effect on parenting ability.

Conclusion

When a parent’s identity is not known, the court conducts a preliminary hearing to attempt to determine the identity of the unknown parent. This hearing must take place before the parental rights of an anonymous parent can be terminated. 

 

The court may even appoint a “guardian ad litem” to search for the unknown parent.

 

If the court cannot identify the unknown parent, a public notice will be published to provide information to the unknown parent. 

 

If there is no response to the publication and the court cannot identify the unknown parent through a search, the court can issue an order terminating the unknown parent's rights.

 

To understand more on how and when does a father lose parental rights, click here.