Nevada family-law case summaries

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.