Judge reversed on parental rights

FAYETTEVILLE — The Arkansas Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed a Washington County Circuit judge’s decision to terminate the parental rights of a couple who divorced then moved out of state and remarried. Justices said Judge Stacey Zimmerman erred because Department of Human Services case workers failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence the reasons given in the Human Services petition to terminate existed. The opinion noted a worker for the Division of Family Services testified during a hearing everything she recorded about things the couple hadn’t done “is not stuff I really know.” The petition claimed the couple had failed to remedy problems cited by the agency and “subsequent factors.” Zimmerman relied on the mother’s “failure to protect” the children from the father, but under the termination of his parental rights, Human Services provided no evidence he was doing anything the mother needed to protect the children from, according to the Appeals Court opinion. Justices said it was clear the trial court concluded the mother’s return to living with the father was the reason placement of the children with her was contrary to their health, safety or welfare and the mother didn’t plan to leave the father. It’s impossible to see a basis for concluding that, in returning to the father, the mother wasn’t making “proper, protective decisions as regards her children” when Human Services didn’t satisfy its burden of proving he was a threat to the children, according to the opinion. Termination of [the mother’s] parental rights must fail also.”