Full opinion can be found here.
On September 30, 2008, Division Two of the Arizona Court of Appeals held in Bobby G. v. Arizona Department of Economic Security, 540 Ariz. Adv. Rep. 6 (2008) that a private Petition to Terminate Parental Rights may be filed pertaining to a child already involved in a dependency proceeding. In this case, the minor child was adjudicated dependent, and her father was actively involved in his case plan and working toward reunification. The Arizona Department of Economic Security asked the Court for additional time to accomplish reunification at the permanency hearing and received an additional ninety days. The attorney for the minor objected at that time, and thereafter filed a Petition to Terminate Parental Rights under A.R.S. ยง8-533. This statute authorizes interested parties to file a Petition to Terminate Parental Rights, and is one of two statutory mechanisms in Arizona that allow a termination of parental rights. The second method of terminating parental rights in Arizona is codified under Section 10 of Title 8 in the Arizona Revised Statutes and applies to children who have been adjudicated dependent. These statutes allow the Department of Economic Security to file a Petition to Terminate Parental Rights after receiving authorization from the Court in a dependency proceeding. The private Petition to Terminate Parental Rights was granted, and the father appealed.
The father argued that counsel for the minor child was precluded from filing a private Petition to Terminate Parental Rights because the child was already involved in a dependency proceeding, and therefore only termination proceeding filed pursuant to Section 10 of Title 8 would be appropriate. The Appellate Court disagreed. The Court found that nothing in the language of the statutes precluded concurrent private termination actions and dependency proceedings prior to Court authorization of a termination proceeding as part of the dependency. The Court found further support for its position in Ariz. Juv. R. Ct. Rule 64(B), which states that nothing precludes the filing of a private petition to terminate parental rights on cases subject to dependency proceedings filed after July 1998. Therefore, appropriate parties can pursue termination of parental rights despite an ongoing dependency proceeding.
The Court further affirmed that the father's rights to due process and equal protection had not been violated, that there was sufficient evidence of abandonment, and that there was evidence that termination was in the best interests of the child.
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