Termination Of Parental Rights Research Articles

Termination of parental rights: litigation or application of family legal liability

This article is devoted to the procedural features of the consideration of cases of deprivation of parental rights based on the materials of judicial practice and theoretical studies. Attention is drawn to the presence of public interest in the subject of judicial protection in cases of deprivation of parental rights and the need, in connection with this, to single out this category of cases as a special type of civil proceedings along with other cases related to the protection of the rights of minors. The studied judicial practice allows us to conclude that it is difficult to resolve the issue of the existence of sufficient grounds for deprivation of parental rights. The ineffectiveness of such a measure as warnings in case of refusal to satisfy the claim for deprivation of parental rights was revealed. It is substantiated that, since it is recognized that the deprivation of parental rights is a measure of family legal responsibility, it is necessary to include in the subject of judicial protection and questions of compensation for damage, since improper performance of parental duties is often accompanied by the fact that the defendant uses benefits and payments for children not according to their intended purpose. It is advisable not only to raise the issue of collecting these funds in favor of the child, but also to determine the fate of the maternity capital directly in the court decision and also to check how these funds were spent. The ineffectiveness of such a measure as warnings in case of refusal to satisfy the claim for deprivation of parental rights was revealed. It is substantiated that, since it is recognized that the deprivation of parental rights is a measure of family legal responsibility, it is necessary to include in the subject of judicial protection and questions of compensation for damage, since improper performance of parental duties is often accompanied by the fact that the defendant uses benefits and payments for children not according to their intended purpose. It is advisable not only to raise the issue of collecting these funds in favor of the child, but also to determine the fate of the maternity capital directly in the court decision and also to check how these funds were spent. Cruelty to a child and abuse of parental rights, no doubt, causes moral suffering and affects the health of the child, so it is necessary to resolve the issue of compensation for moral harm. The problem of the procedural position of the child himself and taking into account his opinion is highlighted. Attention is drawn to the need for special procedural regulation of a number of issues, which together led to the conclusion that cases of deprivation of parental rights do not correspond in their substantive nature to either action or special proceedings.

상속권 상실 선고에 관한 법무부 민법 개정안

Is it fair for parents who did not raise their children to inherit property after their children’s death? In response to this question, the Ministry of Justice of Korea submitted a civil law amendment bill to the National Assembly that introduces a system of disinheritance. This article introduces and reviews such civil law amendments. The main conclusions are as follows: First, in terms of legal stability, it is not appropriate to include violation of duty to support as a reason for disqualification from inheritance. It is also not appropriate for inheritance disqualification to be treated as a preliminary issue in civil litigation. However, termination of parental rights can be recognized as a reason for disqualification from inheritance.
 Second, when depriving an heir of his inheritance rights, it is desirable to have it go through a court trial. If it is allowed to unilaterally deprive the heir of the inheritance right by the will of the heir, there is a risk that the decedent will arbitrarily deprive the heir of the inheritance right.
 Third, If the deceased did not express his/her intention to deprive the heir of his/her inheritance rights during his/her lifetime, such heir should not be deprived of the right to inheritance even if the reasons for loss of the right to inheritance are met. If the level of disqualification from inheritance has not been reached, the will of the deceased is necessary to justify the result of Disinheritance.

Termination of Parental Rights Is Common and Should Not Be Seen as a Proxy for Child Abuse.

Termination of Parental Rights Is Common and Should Not Be Seen as a Proxy for Child Abuse.

Housing circumstances of disabled parents within the child welfare system

Parents with disabilities are more likely than their nondisabled counterparts to have child welfare system involvement. Furthermore, once they are involved in the child welfare system, parents with disabilities have disproportionately high rates of poor outcomes, including termination of parental rights. Inadequate housing is also associated with heightened risk for child welfare system involvement, and yet no study has explored the housing circumstances of parents with different types of disabilities within the child welfare system.The present study aims to fill these gaps by providing a national-level examination of the housing circumstances of parents with disabilities involved in the child welfare system, including parents from racial and ethnic minorities. Using data from data the 2018 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), Poisson regression analyses yielded risk ratios, which were used to compare the housing circumstances of parents with and without disabilities. Interaction terms were used to explore the compounding effects of race and disability.Results show that parents with disabilities compared to parents without disabilities experience heightened risk for inadequate housing. The risk is compounded for Black parents with disabilities. These findings indicate the need to prioritize housing supports for disabled parents with child welfare system involvement.

Event history analysis on racial disparities in the path to adoption for Black and White children

BackgroundBlack children are significantly overrepresented in many phases of the U.S. child welfare system. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to investigate racial disproportionality and disparities in the adoption process and factors that predict the length of time to adoption. Participants and settingThis study utilized administrative data from the 2014 year of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) collected in 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. MethodsThe disproportionality metric (DM) and disparity index (DI) were constructed for Black and White children, and event history analyses were conducted to calculate the probability of adoption while considering the time to adoption finalization. ResultsDM indicated that Black children (0.81) were underrepresented in adoption, and DI indicated that the likelihood of adoption for Black children (0.73) was one third lower than that for White children. The event history analyses revealed that White children were 1.27 times more likely to be adopted than Black children. White children had considerably fewer days from termination of parental rights to adoption finalization with a median time of 273.5 days compared to 328 days for Black children. Factors that extended adoption time included child intellectual, physical, and emotional/behavioral disabilities, visual and hearing impairments, parental alcohol abuse and disability, and child maltreatment histories, while parental drug abuse and longer stays in out-of-home care shortened the adoption process. We also found a significant interaction effect of race and neglect on adoption. Neglected Black children had a longer time to adoption than neglected White children. ConclusionsMore dedicated outreach programs and resources must be developed to ensure the effectiveness of adoption services and cultural continuity for Black children.

“The Family Separation Crisis That No One Knows About” How Our Flawed Legal and Prison Systems Work to Keep Incarcerated Parents from Their Children

Incarcerated parents are at an increased risk of their parental rights being terminated due to the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997. The ASFA was passed with the intention of limiting the number of children trapped in the U.S. foster care system and is commonly known for shifting efforts from reunification to adoption.101 This act results in a swift and sudden termination of parental rights (TPR). The negative impact of this law on incarcerated parents is evident considering that in the years following the passage of the ASFA, the rate of TPR for incarcerated parents has increased by 250%.102 This piece aims to identify aspects of the ASFA which threaten incarcerated parents' ability to be reunited with their children after their prison sentence, along with elements of the prison system that prevent incarcerated parents from abiding by the regulations of the ASFA and maintaining contact with their children. The most detrimental aspect of the ASFA is the 15 of 22 Provision, which requires the state to file for termination of parental rights when a child has been in foster care for a consecutive 15 of the past 22 months.103 This regulation guarantees the TPR for any parent with a prison sentence longer than a year and a half during which a child is sent to foster care, resulting in the permanent severance of the parent-child relationship. In addition, strict timeline requirements of the ASFA relating to the child’s placements and hearings to discuss these placements make it challenging for incarcerated parents to fight for reunification. This issue is compounded by failures of the prison system, which prevent incarcerated parents from participating in their child’s placement process. Most proposed solutions suggest a full repeal of the ASFA, while others argue that a major reform of the ASFA is sufficient. The states of New York, Washington, and Colorado have already initiated this reform by creating exceptions to the 15 of 22 Provision, along with including other considerations and accommodations for incarcerated parents.104 The findings explored in this paper clearly indicate that incarcerated parents are at a disadvantage when trying to reunite with their children. Their parental rights are terminated at an unjust rate due to the strict requirements of the ASFA: a law that fails to acknowledge the circumstances of incarcerated parents and instead strips their parental rights away

State-level variation in the cumulative prevalence of child welfare system contact, 2015–2019

BackgroundPrior estimates of the cumulative risks of child welfare system contact illustrate the prominence of this system in the lives of children in the United States (U.S.). However, these estimates report national data on a system administered at the state and local levels and are unable to detail potential simultaneous geographic and racial/ethnic variation in the prevalence of these events. MethodsUsing 2015–2019 data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System and Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, we use synthetic cohort life tables to estimate cumulative state- and race/ethnicity-specific risks by age 18 of experiencing: (1) a child protective services investigation, (2) confirmed maltreatment, (3) foster care placement, and (4) termination of parental rights for children in the U.S. ResultsIn the U.S., state-level investigation risks ranged from 14% to 63%, confirmed maltreatment risks from 3% to 27%, foster care placement risks from 2% to 18%, and risks of parental rights termination from 0% to 8%. Racial/ethnic disparities in these risks varied greatly across states, with larger disparities at higher levels of involvement. Whereas Black children had higher risks of all events than white children in nearly all states, Asian children had consistently lower risks. Finally, ratios comparing risks of child welfare events show these prevalences did not move in parallel, across states or racial/ethnic groups. ContributionThis study provides new estimates of spatial and racial/ethnic variation in children’s lifetime risks of maltreatment investigation, confirmed maltreatment, foster care placement, and termination of parental rights in the U.S., as well as relative risks of these events.

Insecure housing, substance abuse, and incarceration among emerging adults aging out of foster care: Examining associations with legal orphan status

Tens of thousands of youth age out of the foster care system each year without a permanent family, and many do so after having their parents’ rights severed through involuntary termination of parental rights. These legal orphans have no permanent supportive living situation and no legal relationship to their families, putting them at particular risk of poor developmental outcomes in emerging adulthood due to limited levels of social support. Despite rising concerns from practitioners and researchers, no empirical evidence exists showing potential implications of legal orphanhood. This study estimated a series of logistic regression models using linked administrative and survey data to determine whether one's status as a legal orphan was associated with increased odds of experiencing insecure housing, substance abuse, and incarceration when compared to other youth who have aged out of foster care. Results indicate that legal orphan status was associated with a 38 percent increase in the odds of experiencing insecure housing by age 21, even when adjusting for potentially confounding foster care experiences. Additionally, inequities in adverse outcomes were observed for young men and youth identified as being Native American and multiracial. Child welfare system professionals should consider change strategies that mitigate the potential developmental harm of system-level and legal decisions for these subpopulations.

Caveats of mental healthcare act-2017: Recommendation for amendments.

Dear Sir, The rights-based framework in the current Mental Healthcare Act 2017 (MHA-2017) has received a wider acceptance in the minds of policymakers, patients, caregivers, judicial officers, and mental health professionals.[1,2] However, there appears to be a huge gap between acceptance in our minds and implementation at the ground level. Theoretical knowledge of MHA-2017 and the inability to translate it into practice in most of the general hospitals in the country due to systemic issues has created a dilemma in the minds of psychiatry residents. Therefore, it is necessary to have periodic sensitization programs for psychiatry trainees as well as psychiatrists to learn about changing scenarios in mental health legislation in the past five years.[3] The only discipline of Medicine that carries special significance beyond ethical practice involving beneficence, autonomy, non-maleficence, and justice is psychiatry. This practice and the respect for the rights of a person to bring about optimum mental health outcomes have been legally guided. Forensic psychiatry has started to evolve as a subspecialty of psychiatry.[4] However, are psychiatrists in the country confident in dealing with legal issues evolving in the aftermath of MHA-2017 and imparting this practice to postgraduate trainees? Is clinical practice synchronizing with the legal framework? Are we dealing with the paradox of MHA-2017? Are budding psychiatrists across the country in dilemma with regard to MHA-2017? The response of different states is varied in terms of readiness of infrastructure, the constitution of the State Mental Health Authority (SMHA), the functioning of Mental Health Review Boards (MHRB), and overall dismal application of MHA-2017. Are there hasty translations of Western World rules on the infertile grounds of India? More than four years after passing the act, the current level of functional implementation does not appear to be a healthy indicator for the growth of mental health services in the country. This could provoke lawmakers to bring out the amendments to MHA-2017 to best suit the mental health services and practices of the country. In the absence of functional MHRBs, the practical caveats that may require amendments may include providing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to children and use of hospital beds for day-care procedures in psychiatry that include but are not limited to the somatic therapies in psychiatry such as administration of electroconvulsive therapy and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). It also includes short-term observation for a few hours in a general hospital following administration of long-acting injectables (LAI) antipsychotics and assessment for the appearance of acute side effects such as post-injection delirium sedation syndrome, and acute dystonia and oculogyric crisis. The other concerns requiring immediate attention for the functioning of MHRB include notifying advance directives, continuing admission under special circumstances, and provision of separate wards for children and women under psychiatry in a general hospital. These amendments could also add the role of MHRBs for adolescents involved in juvenile delinquency, child custody, termination of parental rights, and other related issues.[5] The protection of the rights of a person with mental illness should not be viewed as safeguarding oneself from the practice of psychiatry in the absence of full-fledged implementation of MHA-2017. This could be important for making a provision for the psychiatrist witnessing nonsexual or sexual boundary violation to notify the MHRB in advance, a point not placed in MHA-2017. The spirit of the MHA-2017 also does not clarify the role of the Consultation Liaison Psychiatrist and its effective practice in different departments under general hospital units. Further, the role of the psychiatrist in cases requiring cognizance of other specified acts such as the Prevention of Child Sexual Offense (POCSO) Act, Narcotics and Psychoactive Substances (NDPS) Act, The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, Right To Information (RTI) Act, etc. should also be viewed in parallel with MHA-2017. Authors emphasize the opportunity of teaching programs to highlight the gaps in training and implementation of MHA-2017.[6] The absence of functional implementation of MHA-2017 requires the churning of thoughts of stakeholders to amend a few provisions such as the formation of the transitional local hospital review board till formal MHRBs are functional.[7] This letter encourages clinicians and researchers to assess the compliance status of Indian states with MHA-2017 and to provide feasible solutions through systematic scientific research. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.

Reinstating Parental Rights That Have Been Terminated: Finding Ways to Restore Legal Connections for Children Who Had Been in Foster Care

ABSTRACT Legal and relational permanence have long been viewed as a central outcome of child welfare services. Timely termination of parental rights (TPR) has been a cornerstone of these permanency efforts because TPRs facilitate permanency through adoption. Yet the number of adoption plans that are not finalized or sustained are not trivial. Over 2,000 youth emancipate from foster care each year and many more leave earlier but not before a TPR has occurred. Some states have passed legislation to allow reinstatements of parental rights. This paper reviews the range of factors state legislation includes, reviews scant existing literature on how TPRs may effect youth, and proposes several options for ways that unproductive TPRs can be reduced, and timely reinstatements increased.

Differential Gateways, Facilitators, and Barriers to Substance Use Disorder Treatment for Pregnant Women and Mothers: A Scoping Systematic Review.

Access to substance use disorder (SUD) treatment is complex, and more so for pregnant women and mothers who experience unique barriers. This scoping systematic review aimed to summarize contemporary findings on gateways, facilitators, and barriers to treatment for pregnant women and mothers with SUD. We used the scoping review methodology and a systematic search strategy via MEDLINE/PubMed and Google Scholar. The search was augmented by the similar article lists for sources identified in PubMed. Scholarly and peer-reviewed articles that were published in English from 1996 to 2019 were included. A thematic analysis of the selected studies was used to summarize pathways to SUD treatment and to identify research gaps. The analysis included 41 articles. Multiple gateway institutions were identified: health care settings, social service agencies, criminal justice settings, community organizations, and employers. Some of the identified facilitators and barriers to SUD treatment were unique to pregnant women and mothers (eg, fear of incarceration for child abuse). Both personal (emotional support and social support) and child-related factors (loss of children, suspension or termination of parental rights, the anticipation of reuniting with children) motivated women to seek treatment. Major access barriers included fear, stigma, charges of child abuse, inconvenience, and financial hardship. There has been progress in implementing different types of interventions and treatments for that were attentive to pregnant women and mothers' needs. We developed a conceptual model that characterized women's pathways to treatment by deciphering women's potential engagement in gateway settings.

Prenatal substance use policies and newborn health.

We study the effect of punitive and priority treatment policies relating to illicit substance use during pregnancy on the rate of neonatal drug withdrawal syndrome, low birth weight, low gestational age, and prenatal care use. Punitive policies criminalize prenatal substance use, or define prenatal substance exposure as child maltreatment in child welfare statutes or as grounds for termination of parental rights. Priority treatment policies are supportive and grant pregnant women priority access to substance use disorder treatment programs. Our empirical strategy relies on administrative data from 2008 to 2018 and a difference‐in‐differences framework that exploits the staggered implementation of these policies. We find that neonatal drug withdrawal syndrome increases by 10%–18% following the implementation of a punitive policy. This growth is accompanied by modest reductions in prenatal care, which may reflect deterrence from healthcare utilization. In contrast, priority treatment policies are associated with small reductions in low gestational age (2%) and low birth weight (2%), along with increases in prenatal care use. Taken together, our findings suggest that punitive approaches may be associated with unintended adverse pregnancy outcomes, and that supportive approaches may be more effective for improving perinatal health.

Ableism in the Child Welfare System: Findings from a Qualitative Study

Abstract It is well established that parents with disabilities are likely to have adverse experiences within the U.S. child welfare system, including disproportionately high rates of involvement and termination of parental rights. However, no known studies have examined the child welfare system through the lens of ableism. This qualitative phenomenological study included interviews with 15 parents with disabilities, 15 child welfare workers, and 15 attorneys who represent parents. Interviews revealed four levels of ableism within the child welfare system: (1) internalized, (2) interpersonal, (3) institutional, and (4) structural. Participants described their own internalized ableism, offered examples of interpersonal prejudice against disabled parents in the child welfare system, and discussed the institutional practice of using parents’ disabilities as a reason to separate them from their children and deny them services and accommodations. Interviews with parents also revealed that ableism across the child welfare system and other institutions could make it more difficult for them to reunify with their children. At the same time, child welfare workers and attorneys noted that disabled parents are disadvantaged by federally mandated reunification timelines. Ameliorating ableism in the child welfare system requires interventions at each level.

Experience of legal regulation of termination of parental rights under the legislation of Moldova and individual states of the European Union

In the scientific article, a scientific study of the experience of legal regulation of the deprivation of parental rights under the legislation of Moldova and certain states of the European Union was carried out. The article states that French legislation provides for two types of actions for which a person can be deprived of parental rights - criminally punishable actions against a child and actions related to non-fulfillment or improper fulfillment of parental duties (regarding the latter, only a few manifestations of a person's behavior are highlighted, which are unconditional grounds for deprivation of parental rights), other forms of evasion of parental responsibilities towards a child lead to deprivation of parental rights only if they last for more than two years. Deprivation of parental rights can be both complete (affect all parental rights of a person) and partial (affect only certain rights or individual children of a person). German civil law defines the possibility of deprivation of parental rights, defining it as a measure of last resort, which is applied to persons who do not fulfill or improperly fulfill parental rights and duties, but do not define in detail the grounds and legal consequences of deprivation of parental rights. Deprivation of parental rights according to the legislation of the member states of the European Union, which became part of the European Union in 2004 – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia and Poland, can be called « termination of the right of custody » (Latvia), « deprivation of the right to custody of a child » (Estonia ), « deprivation of parental responsibility » (Poland) and is used for abuse of parental rights and responsibilities, improper fulfillment of them, commission of an intentional criminal act against a child or use of a child who does not bear criminal responsibility to commit a crime, if one of the parents has committed this crime as an accomplice, committing other actions that may pose a threat to the physical, mental or moral development of the child, the behavior of a third person, and if the parents are unwilling or unable to prevent the threat. The legislation of these countries provides for the complete deprivation of parental rights (except for the legislation of Slovakia, which allows partial deprivation of parental rights). Moldovan family legislation defines a fairly detailed list of grounds for deprivation of parental rights, however, the procedural order and legal consequences of deprivation of parental rights are generally similar to Ukrainian legislation.

The harms of punishing substance use during pregnancy

As rates of substance use have increased in the United States, rates of substance-involved pregnancies have also been on the rise, inspiring new civil policies designed to punish pregnant and parenting individuals who engage in substance use or are living with an untreated substance use disorder. Proponents of punitive civil policies argue that such policies will deter substance use behaviors and/or that substance use during pregnancy deserves punishment for harming the fetus. Current scientific evidence invalidates both claims, offering compelling evidence that punitive civil policies often worsen the harms of substance use for both parent and child. In this commentary, we review this evidence and explain how punitive policies that threaten child removal and the termination of parental rights exacerbate the very problems they are ostensibly designed to reduce. Rather than coercive and punitive responses, families affected by substance use need greater access to affordable, evidence-based treatment as well as services that address the structural and relational concerns underlying substance use. Above all, responses to perinatal substance use in both policy and practice should prioritize keeping families together.

Examining Value-Added: Jury-Trial Rights in Termination of Parental Rights Cases

Research typically finds some variability in verdicts across judges versus juries, indicating juries’ added value in legal disputes; that is, juries can and do see cases differently than judges. In an exploratory study, we examine termination of parental rights (TPR) trials, a nontraditional context in which a few states permit juries as well as judges to make decisions. Prior unpublished reports suggest that both judges and juries overwhelmingly terminate rights, but we questioned whether the same pattern would emerge in an area (Texas) with a strong anti-government history. Examining 60 trials in one county, with verdicts on 110 parents, we find that parents used juries infrequently (15% of trials, 12% of parental verdicts) and that terminations dominated verdict outcomes for both judges and juries. An intensively coded subsample of cases revealed few substantive differences in case types, although jury trials last nearly four times as long as bench trials. We conclude that juries are unlikely to provide different outcomes to parents fighting TPR, but we discuss other potential value of jury trials in these cases. Nonetheless, states may need to balance such advantages against cost considerations stemming from longer, more intensive trials.

Contact with Child Protective Services is pervasive but unequally distributed by race and ethnicity in large US counties

This article provides county-level estimates of the cumulative prevalence of four levels of Child Protective Services (CPS) contact using administrative data from the 20 most populous counties in the United States. Rates of CPS investigation are extremely high in almost every county. Racial and ethnic inequality in case outcomes is large in some counties. The total median investigation rate was 34.5%; the risk for Black, Hispanic, and White children exceeded 10% in all counties. Risks of having a CPS investigation were highest for Black children (32.9 to 62.8%). Black children also experienced high rates of later-stage CPS contact, with rates often above 20% for confirmed maltreatment, 10% for foster care placement, and 2% for termination of parental rights (TPR). The only other children who experienced such extreme rates of later-stage CPS interventions were American Indian/Alaska Native children in Middlesex, MA; Hispanic children in Bexar, TX; and all children except Asian/Pacific Islander children in Maricopa, AZ. The latter has uniquely high rates of late-stage CPS interventions. In some jurisdictions, such as New York, NY, (0.2%) and Cook, IL (0.2%), very few children experienced TPR. These results show that early CPS interventions are ubiquitous in large counties but with marked variation in how CPS systems respond to these investigations.

Ending the Family Death Penalty and Building a World We Deserve

U.S. history is rooted in the rationalization of family separation to benefit white supremacy, capitalism and mainstream U.S. values. Because of this dark history, the U.S. history has become the world’s leader of legal destruction of families through termination of parental rights. It is the only country in the world that routinely pays people to adopt children whose parents, often women, very much want to be their parent. The Adoption and Safe Families Act, enacted in 1997, wildly changed the legal landscape of the family regulation system. At that time 47% of the children in the system were Black, and the drug war had been targeting Black men for low level offenses, and labeling Black mothers as “crack moms”. The result was an extreme attack on Black families, for which we have yet to recover. Abolition teaches us to unroot oppressive structures, disrupt and dismantle them while simultaneously supporting a praxis of imagination, healing, and building. In this paper, we encourage people not only to work to repeal ASFA, but to interrogate the imagination which entrenched the legitimacy of ASFA. Part I centers the discussion in our imaginations—the world we want to build, and the demands we are making. Part II moves into a discussion about the counter imagination, the ideas and mythology that created ASFA—the legal framework. In this section, we isolate ASFA as a target for abolition and organizing. Part III moves into a practical discussion about ethical ways to mobilize around ASFA. This section is intended to invite the reader to learn, and question, together. It invites questions, thinking, and problem solving in lieu of providing a recommendation.

Justice for Families

Abstract. When a substantiated allegation of child maltreatment occurs, a family may be referred to the child welfare court. This court may temporarily remove children from their homes, making them dependents of the state. Over the course of a case, the judge assesses the child's needs and safety, and orders services for the family to help them reunify. Internationally, the child welfare court process is complex and lengthy, with a number of hearings that parents are required to attend, and a host of legal decisions rendered. One major decision that may arise from these proceedings is a permanent legal separation of children from their parents, referred to as a termination of parental rights. A decision to terminate parental rights can be life-altering for the entire family. Yet, very little is known about parents' experiences during child welfare court cases, particularly about their legal understanding. A lack of parent understanding may contribute to difficulties with navigating cases and complying with court mandates. Recent mixed-methods research conducted with parents in child welfare proceedings in the United States systematically examined parents' understanding. Findings revealed that parents had a limited understanding of common court terms, professionals' roles, and key processes. Furthermore, 12% of parents could not describe the judge's most recent decision in their case. Qualitative research in the United Kingdom and Canada demonstrates that parents in these countries may also experience challenges with understanding child welfare proceedings. Policy recommendations are offered to underscore the importance of assessing and promoting parents' legal understanding, globally.

Recent Developments in Indiana Family Law: October 2017 to September 2018

This Article considers the notable developments in Indiana family law during the survey period of October 1, 2017 to September 30, 2018. The published appellate cases surveyed in this Article concern property division upon divorce, parenting time and visitation, child custody, child support, adoption and paternity, CHINS and the termination of parental rights, and jurisdiction and procedure.