Anderson v. Douglas
| Decision Date | 19 October 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-401,92-401 |
| Citation | 839 S.W.2d 196,310 Ark. 633 |
| Parties | Mary Douglas ANDERSON, Appellant, v. Tiffany DOUGLAS and Arkansas Department of Human Services, Appellees. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Roger L. Morgan, Mountain Home, for appellant.
John C. Wisner, III, Vickie Warner, Little Rock, Christopher Carter, Mountain Home, for appellees.
The appellant, Mary Douglas Anderson, is twenty years of age and the mother of a three-year-old daughter, appellee Tiffany Douglas. She appeals a chancery court order terminating her parental rights in her daughter and urges that the court's findings were clearly erroneous. She also asserts that the operative statute, Ark.Code Ann. § 9-27-341 (1987), is vague on its face and violative of due process. Her arguments are without merit, and we affirm.
On May 14, 1990, ten-month-old Tiffany Douglas Anderson, was admitted to Baxter County Regional Hospital with severe bruises on her face and legs. The injuries apparently occurred while Tiffany was in the custody of her stepfather, John Bradley Anderson. Bradley Anderson subsequently pled guilty to physical abuse in September 1990 and was sentenced to prison. At the time, the appellant was in Baxter County Hospital due to complications with her pregnancy.
The appellee Arkansas Department of Human Services filed a petition in chancery court on May 15, 1990, for emergency custody of Tiffany. The petition stated that Tiffany was a dependent and neglected juvenile. An emergency custody order finding her dependent and neglected was subsequently entered that same month, and DHS gained temporary custody of Tiffany. She was then placed in foster care.
A hearing was held on June 12, 1990, which resulted in an adjudication consent order which, among other things, ordered Tiffany to continue in foster care for six months, after which time the court would review the case. DHS then prepared a case plan which outlined the following objectives Anderson needed to achieve to regain custody of her daughter: (1) become financially independent; (2) improve her emotional well-being and parenting skills; (3) obtain adequate housing; (4) have supervised weekly visitation with Tiffany at the DHS offices; and (5) eliminate contact between the stepfather and Tiffany. On September 18, 1990, the appellant read and signed the case plan. Two days later, Shirley Spitzer, a case worker for DHS, submitted a report stating that Tiffany had been placed in foster care and that the consent order had been complied with.
The chancery court reviewed the matter on October 30, 1990, and found that Anderson was complying with the case plan but that Tiffany's return to the appellant was not in her best interests. A case report submitted four months later was substantially different. On February 19, 1991, Shirley Spitzer reported that the appellant had not complied with the case plan, and she outlined Anderson's lack of progress since October 30, 1990. The appellant had discontinued counseling and parenting classes, was unemployed and living in Missouri, and had only seen Tiffany twice in the preceding two months. Spitzer recommended that Tiffany remain in the custody of DHS and that appellant continue counseling.
The following month, on March 25, 1991, the chancery court reviewed the case again and found that Anderson had not complied with the case plan; that efforts to rehabilitate and reunify the family had not been successful; that Anderson had discontinued counseling and parenting classes and had failed to visit Tiffany regularly; and that return of Tiffany to the appellant was not in Tiffany's best interests. The court ordered Tiffany to remain with DHS and in foster care until June 3, 1991.
On May 31, 1991, DHS filed a petition to terminate Anderson's parental rights. Anderson first agreed to the termination but later reneged prior to trial. The matter was tried on September 23, 1991, and the chancery court terminated Anderson's parental rights in Tiffany, finding that there was clear and convincing evidence that the allegations in DHS's petition were correct. It did so on the basis that Tiffany had not lived with Anderson for a year, that Anderson had not remedied her home environment, and that Anderson had willfully failed to provide significant material support or have meaningful contact with Tiffany. DHS was given the power to consent to an adoption.
On appeal, Anderson contends that the chancery court clearly erred in its findings and conclusions. She points to the statute which provides that an order terminating parental rights must be based on a finding of clear and convincing evidence on one of several grounds, including:
(1) That a juvenile has been adjudicated by the court to be dependent-neglected and has continued out of the home for one (1) year and despite a meaningful effort by the Department of Human Services to rehabilitate the home and correct the conditions which caused removal, those conditions have not been remedied by the parent.
(2) The juvenile has lived outside the home of the parent for a period of one (1) year and the parent has willfully failed to provide significant material support in accordance with the parent's means or to maintain meaningful contact with the juvenile. To find willful failure to maintain meaningful contact, it must be shown that the parent was not prevented from visiting or having contact with the juvenile by the juvenile's custodian or any other person, taking into consideration the distance of the juvenile's placement from the parent's home. Material support consists of either financial contributions or food, shelter, clothing, or other necessities where such contribution has been requested by the juvenile's custodian or ordered by a court of competent jurisdiction.
Ark.Code Ann. § 9-27-341(b)(1) & (2) (Repl.1991). The chancery court held that Anderson had violated both subsections of the statute.
The appellant is correct in asserting that when the burden of proving a disputed fact in chancery is by clear and convincing evidence, the question that we must answer on appeal is whether the chancery court's finding that the disputed fact was...
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