Nevada family-law case summaries

This case arose after the Clark County Department of Family Services (DFS) received an anonymous hotline call in April 2010 alleging that Keaundra D.'s infant son, C.L.B., Jr., had been burned on the face. Keaundra told investigators that the burn occurred when her two-year-old daughter, A.D.L., reported that C.L.B., Jr. had "tried to kiss" a hot iron that fell off a dresser while Keaundra was in another room. DFS removed both children from Keaundra's care. One physician who examined the child in person, Dr. Neuman, found "no evidence of abuse." A different doctor, Dr. Mehta, who reviewed only photographs, opined the burn was deliberate. The juvenile court found the injury was nonaccidental and ordered Keaundra to follow a "case plan" - a list of steps she had to complete to get her children back. She maintained housing and a job, kept in touch with DFS, completed parenting classes, and finished a physical-abuse assessment and therapy. Her therapist testified that her risk of reoffending was low and that she showed none of the signs typical of an abusive parent. DFS itself reported that she had "successfully completed her case plan and has the knowledge and tools to effectively parent her children." But DFS still wanted her parental rights terminated, and the district court still terminated them, for one reason: Keaundra would not admit that she had deliberately held the iron to her son's face. Her case plan required her to "articulate" the "sequence of events" leading to the abuse "as sustained by the Court." Because she insisted the burn was accidental, the court treated her as out of compliance. DFS confirmed at trial that, had Keaundra admitted intentional abuse, it would not have sought termination. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects people from being forced to incriminate themselves, not just in criminal trials but in any proceeding where their answers might be used against them in a future criminal case. Admitting that one held a hot iron to a child's face would expose a person to prosecution for child abuse under Nevada law (NRS 200.508). The court held that a parent cannot be forced to choose between admitting a crime and losing her children - that choice is unconstitutionally coercive. The court drew a line: a juvenile court may require a parent to participate in meaningful therapy, even if therapy works better when a parent acknowledges past conduct, and a parent who refuses meaningful therapy may face consequences. But a court cannot require, as a condition of keeping parental rights, that the parent expressly admit to a crime. The court also held that the evidence did not support termination on its own merits. Nevada law presumes termination is in a child's best interest when the child has been out of the home for 14 of 20 consecutive months, and presumes a parent has made only "token efforts" in similar circumstances. The court found Keaundra rebutted both presumptions: she stayed in regular phone contact, her mother brought the children to visit, A.D.L. cried and begged to go home to her mother, Keaundra helped support the children financially, and after the first termination order the children waited 17 months in foster care before being placed with relatives. Without the presumptions, there was not substantial evidence to terminate.

This case involves the termination of a father's parental rights to his two surviving children. Between 2006 and 2011, the family experienced seven separate incidents in which one of the three children swallowed foreign objects such as coins, magnets, and batteries. All occurred while the father, Arli, was at work and the mother, Abigail, was home with the children. One son, J.M., died in 2006 from undetermined causes. After three-year-old E.M.M. required surgery to remove a large battery lodged in his throat, doctors became concerned that Abigail was forcing the children to swallow objects and contacted child protective services. The doctors compared the size of the battery, for a child E.M.M.'s age, to an adult swallowing a golf ball. In November 2011, DFS removed A.P.M. and E.M.M. from the home and placed them in foster care. The juvenile court gave each parent a "case plan" - a written list of things they had to do (such as parenting classes and counseling) to try to get their children back. Arli completed his case plan quickly. Even so, in December 2012, DFS asked the court to terminate both parents' rights permanently. After a five-day hearing, the district court ordered termination, finding that Arli had been neglectful by not taking action to protect his children after the repeated swallowing incidents - including continuing to leave them alone with Abigail - and that termination was in the children's best interests. Abigail died while the appeal was pending, leaving only Arli's appeal. The Nevada Supreme Court addressed two new legal questions. First, it held that finishing a court-ordered case plan does not, by itself, prevent a court from terminating parental rights. A completed case plan can be persuasive evidence in the parent's favor, but Nevada law does not make it a shield against termination if the other legal grounds are satisfied. Second, it interpreted a Nevada statute that creates two legal presumptions when a child has lived outside the home "for 14 months of any 20 consecutive months": (1) the parent is presumed to have made only token efforts, and (2) termination is presumed to be in the child's best interest. Arli argued the district court had to wait the full 20 months before applying these presumptions. The Supreme Court disagreed - once the 14-month threshold is hit, the presumptions can apply right away. Here the children had been out of the home about 17 months, which was enough. Finally, the court held that "substantial evidence" - meaning enough credible evidence that a reasonable factfinder could agree - supported termination. The court pointed to Arli's failure to take protective action after seven serious swallowing incidents, his limited relationship with the children, and the foster parent's testimony that she had a close relationship with the children and wished to adopt them. The court noted that even with Abigail's death, Arli remained "unable to protect his children from danger, swallowing or otherwise." Two justices dissented in whole or in part. Justice Douglas, joined by Justice Cherry, would have remanded for a new best-interests hearing because Abigail - the apparent source of the danger - had died and Arli had completed his case plan. Justice Saitta agreed with most of the majority opinion but wrote separately to dissent on the parental-fault finding, viewing Arli's mistaken belief about Abigail and his completed case plan as not enough to amount to neglect.

This case is about a mother, Keaundra D., who lost her parental rights to her two children after her one-year-old son, C.B., was burned in the face by an iron. Keaundra told investigators she was the only adult home at the time; according to her trial testimony, she was in an attached bathroom getting ready for work when she heard the iron fall, and her older child told her that C.B. had tried to kiss the iron. After an anonymous call to a child abuse hotline, DFS investigated. Keaundra moved her family to Louisiana, which DFS characterized as a flight in an attempt to hide the children. The children were removed from her care, and DFS filed a petition for protective custody, alleging that Keaundra had either physically abused or negligently supervised C.B. At a hearing, a medical examiner, Dr. Mehta, testified that the shape of the burn was inconsistent with an accident and that the iron was deliberately held to C.B.'s face. Keaundra tried to counter that testimony with a report from Dr. Neuman, the physician who had personally examined C.B. in Louisiana. The hearing master - a court officer who conducts hearings and makes recommendations to a judge - refused to admit the report because it was not a certified copy, found that Keaundra physically abused C.B., and the juvenile court affirmed, concluding the injury was not accidental. Keaundra was then given a "case plan" - a set of requirements a parent must satisfy to be reunited with her children. She completed nearly all of it: parenting classes, stable housing and jobs, an assessment, and therapy. Her therapist testified that her behavior and demeanor had markedly changed and that her risk to reoffend was low. But DFS continued to recommend terminating her parental rights for one reason: she would not admit that she had deliberately held the iron to her son's face. DFS stated at trial that, with such an admission, it would not have sought termination. The district court ultimately terminated her rights, relying on the earlier finding that the injury was not accidental. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court did not decide whether Keaundra abused her child. Instead, it focused on a procedural point: Keaundra argued that Dr. Neuman's report was improperly excluded, and DFS never responded to that argument. Under Nevada's appellate rules, failing to respond to an argument can be treated as a "confession of error" - effectively conceding the point. The court concluded that DFS confessed error. Because every finding of parental fault in the case traced back to the abuse finding - which in turn rested on the improperly excluded rebuttal evidence - the court reversed the termination order and sent the case back for a new trial on Keaundra's parental rights. The court noted, but did not decide, Keaundra's separate argument that conditioning her parental rights on an admission of intentional harm violated her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The order terminating the father Christopher B.'s parental rights was not before the court because he did not appeal.

This case is about when a court may permanently end a parent's legal rights to her children, and who has to prove what before that happens. In May 2002, Child Protective Services removed two children, then twelve and eleven years old, from the home of their mother, Tammila G., and her boyfriend, George L. CPS had received a report that friends of the couple were binding the children with duct tape, slapping, and kicking them while the adults were away. According to the children, this happened repeatedly, and although they told their mother, she did not take steps to stop it. During a follow-up home visit, Tammila admitted to recent methamphetamine use, and George was arrested for a probation violation after officers found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in the house. The children were made wards of the State and placed in foster care. The Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) gave Tammila a "case plan" - a list of steps she had to complete to be reunited with her children, such as drug testing, a psychiatric evaluation, parenting classes, and proof of a stable home and income. Over roughly three and a half years, DCFS filed six reports with the court, each showing that Tammila was not completing the plan. To her credit, she visited the children regularly while they were in Nevada, missing only one visit. Eventually the children were placed with their maternal aunt and uncle in Louisiana, who were interested in adopting them, and the State petitioned to end Tammila's parental rights. After a hearing, the district court granted the petition, finding both that termination was in the children's best interests and that "parental fault" existed - the two things Nevada law requires before parental rights can be terminated. On appeal, Tammila made two main arguments. First, she said the State had to prove that an actual adoptive placement existed for the children before her rights could be terminated, relying on the Federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), a federal law Nevada follows in order to receive federal child-welfare funding. The Nevada Supreme Court rejected this. Reading the federal statute's plain language, the court explained that it requires states to begin looking for an adoptive family at the same time as they seek to terminate parental rights - not to prove one exists first - and the statute even excuses that concurrent search when "the child is being cared for by a relative," which was the situation here. The court also found nothing in Nevada's own statutes requiring proof of an adoptive placement before termination. Second, Tammila argued that the State should have presented evidence of what the children themselves wanted. Nevada law (NRS 128.107(2)) tells courts to consider a child's desires about termination if the child is capable of expressing them, but the statute does not say which side must produce that evidence. Separately, another statute (NRS 128.109(2)) creates a "presumption" - a legal starting assumption - that termination is in a child's best interest once the child has lived outside the parent's home under a protective placement for 14 of any 20 consecutive months. Here, the children had been out of the home for over forty consecutive months. The court held that once that presumption kicks in, it is the parent's burden - not the State's - to offer evidence of the children's desires if the parent wants the court to consider them, because such evidence is part of rebutting the presumption. Tammila offered no such evidence. The court noted that a CASA report from about two years before the hearing indicated the children did not wish to be adopted, but that report predated their move to their aunt and uncle's home, and the district court considered it and terminated the rights anyway. Finally, the court reviewed the record and concluded that substantial evidence supported the termination. Tammila claimed two years of sobriety and a stable home but presented no independent proof of either; she still lived with her boyfriend in the same house where the abuse occurred, and the record did not show the threat had been eliminated. Meanwhile, the children were described as flourishing with their aunt and uncle in Louisiana, with improved school performance and behavior. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the termination.