Background
Jefferson County’s child-welfare division filed a dependency-and-neglect petition concerning U.D.B., then six, based on the mother’s substance use, educational neglect, and unstable housing. The father was serving a sentence for sexual assault on a child. After several placement changes, U.D.B. was placed in a foster home with five siblings.
The division sought to terminate the father’s parental rights. The father asked the juvenile court to place U.D.B. with her paternal grandfather, ultimately through an allocation of parental responsibilities between father and grandfather. The juvenile court denied that request and terminated the father’s rights.
The Court’s Holding
The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed. The juvenile court did not clearly err in finding that the proposed placement with the grandfather was not a viable less drastic alternative to termination. The record supported the court’s conclusion that keeping U.D.B. with her siblings served her best interests, given her strong sibling bond and her medical conditions requiring extraordinary care.
The court also upheld the finding that the statutory preference for kin placement had been rebutted. Evidence supported concerns about the grandfather’s ability to manage U.D.B.’s medical needs and to protect her given his perceived minimization of the father’s sexual-assault conviction. The father also failed to establish prejudice from his ineffective-assistance claim because he did not show that any additional paternal relatives could have taken both U.D.B. and her siblings or otherwise changed the termination outcome.
Key Takeaways
- A relative-placement proposal must be in the child’s best interests, not merely adequate to meet the child’s needs.
- A kin-placement preference may be rebutted when the child’s best interests favor the current placement.
- An ineffective-assistance claim fails without a showing that counsel’s alleged error probably affected the result.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that sibling stability, medical needs, and safety concerns can outweigh a proposed kin placement in a termination case. It also confirms that parents challenging counsel’s investigation of relative options must identify how the omitted evidence would likely have changed the result.