IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 17-0961
Filed September 13, 2017
IN THE INTEREST OF P.G.,
Minor Child,
G.M., Mother,
Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Joseph W. Seidlin,
District Associate Judge.
A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights to her child.
AFFIRMED.
Cathleen J. Siebrecht of Siebrecht Law Firm, Des Moines, for appellant
mother.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Ana Dixit, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Nicole Garbis Nolan of Youth Law Center, Des Moines, guardian ad litem
for minor child.
Considered by Vaitheswaran, P.J., and Doyle and Bower, JJ.
2
VAITHESWARAN, Presiding Judge.
A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights to her child, born in
2016. She does not challenge the grounds for termination cited by the juvenile
court. She contends “[t]he Juvenile Court erred in terminating [her] parental
rights when [she] had lower mental functioning necessitating additional time to
benefit from services and the child was in the custody of her relative.”
The mother’s challenge implicates two statutory provisions: (1) Iowa Code
section 232.104(2)(b) (2017), which allows a court to grant a parent additional
time to reunify with a child, and (2) Iowa Code section 232.116(3)(a), which
allows a court to deny the termination petition if a child is placed with a relative.
“We review a request for additional time for an abuse of discretion and will
reverse only if injustice will result from a denial.” In re K.S., No. 09-0052, 2009
WL 607564, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 11, 2009). Similarly, the factors contained
in section 232.116(3) “are permissive” and a court may use its discretion in
applying them. In re M.W., 876 N.W.2d 212, 225 (Iowa 2016).
The mother has a longstanding addiction to crack cocaine and a history of
violent relationships with men. Her two oldest children were transferred to the
care of relatives. The mother testified her rights to those children were
terminated by the Illinois counterpart to the Iowa Department of Human
Services.1
The Iowa department intervened in 2013 following the birth of her third
child. The department facilitated the mother’s admission to a clinically managed
1
When the mother underwent a psychological evaluation two months before the
termination hearing, she denied human services involvement with her oldest two children
but later indicated the agency may have been involved.
3
high-intensity residential treatment program. The mother remained in the
program for twenty months. On her discharge, the mother’s primary counselor
recommended that she continue with mental health services and pursue
“outpatient substance abuse treatment to allow support during her transition back
into the community.” Within four months, the department lost contact with the
mother. Her parental rights to her third child were terminated.
After the birth of her fourth child—the child that is the subject of this
appeal—the mother consented to the child’s temporary removal from her custody
and stipulated to the child’s continued removal and adjudication as a child in
need of assistance. The child was eventually placed with the mother’s sister,
where she remained through the termination hearing.
Although the mother participated in reunification services, including
individual therapy and visits with her child, she was known to have relapsed twice
after the case involving her fourth child was opened. Based on these relapses,
the department transitioned the mother from semi-supervised visits to supervised
visits with her child. The case proceeded to termination.
At the termination hearing, the mother testified she had been using crack
cocaine twice a week over the previous year. When asked if her substance
abuse had increased or decreased during that time period, she responded that it
“[i]ncreased.” While she stated she could still safely parent her child, a
department employee testified otherwise. He noted that she had “a full plate of
her own issues just in her day-to-day life,” including “her addictions and her
mental health,” and he opined, “I just don’t see that she could, you know, have
[the child] in her custody anytime soon.”
4
The mother suggests she should have been granted additional time to
reunify based on her documented low IQ. But the primary concern precipitating
termination of her parental rights to the fourth child was not the mother’s low IQ
but her continued substance abuse. The department had already furnished
years of reunification services to address this concern, to no avail. As the
department employee reported, “The parental protective concerns that existed at
the time of removal continue to be of concern and no additional amount of
services is likely to change the outcome at this time.”
Based on this record, we conclude the juvenile court acted appropriately in
declining to grant the mother additional time to reunify with the child. We further
conclude the juvenile court acted appropriately in declining to invoke the
“relative” exception to termination. As the juvenile court stated, “Although [the
mother] has made some progress, [she], after fourteen months of services with
this child and two years with her prior child, remains mired in the early stages of
developing the skills she needs to permanently lift her up out of the morass of
drug addiction and dangerous relationships.”2
We affirm the termination of the mother’s parental rights to her fourth child.
AFFIRMED.
2
If the mother makes progress in these areas, her sister testified she would be willing to
permit contact with the child.