Adoption of Bianca (Lawyers Weekly No. 11-050-17)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify th9e Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us 16-P-764 Appeals Court ADOPTION OF BIANCA.[1] No. 16-P-764. Middlesex. February 10, 2017. – April 28, 2017. Present: Milkey, Hanlon, & Neyman, JJ. Adoption, Dispensing with parent’s consent, Visitation rights. Parent and Child, Dispensing with parent’s consent to adoption, Adoption. Minor, Adoption, Visitation rights. Evidence, Child custody proceeding. Petition filed in the Middlesex County Division of the Juvenile Court Department on March 10, 2011. The case was heard by Kenneth J. King, J. Deborah Sirotkin Butler for the mother. Ilse Nehring for the father. William T. Cuttle for Department of Children and Families. Yvette L. Kruger for the child. MILKEY, J. This case involves the welfare of a child to whom we shall refer as Bianca. After trial, a Juvenile Court judge found the child’s mother and father unfit, and issued decrees terminating their parental rights. See G. L. c. 119, § 26; G. L. c. 210, § 3. The judge approved a plan put forward by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) for Bianca to be adopted by a couple who were close friends of the father’s family and who have cared for Bianca for much of her life.[2] Finally, the judge ordered regular postadoption contact with both parents, but permitted the preadoptive parents to terminate visitation with the mother or father if they determined it was no longer in Bianca’s best interests. On appeal, the mother and father contest the termination of their parental rights. The father also challenges the approval of the DCF adoption plan over his plan that the preadoptive parents be made Bianca’s guardians so that he could seek custody in the future. The mother requests that the case be remanded to determine whether she remains unfit and to determine Bianca’s current best interests. We affirm. Background.[3] As a result of the father’s abuse of the mother, Bianca’s life has been fraught with instability and exposure to violence. In addition, the mother has long struggled with substance abuse, and due to incarceration or treatment, she was frequently unavailable to care for Bianca. Little would be served by providing further detail of the mother’s history, particularly because she does not contest that she was unfit at the time of trial. The father physically abused the mother throughout their marriage, including during the mother’s pregnancy with Bianca, who was born in […]