Court of Appeals Affirms Parents Did Not Abandon Child, DHHS Failed to Make Reasonable Efforts to Remove the Child
Opinion Published: April 16, 2025 (Murray, P.J., and M. J. Kelly and N. P. Hood)
Docket No. 369927
Livingston County Circuit Court - Family Division
Holding: Respondent parents did not abandon their child and DHHS failed to make reasonable efforts to remove the child. Therefore, the COA affirmed the trial court’s decision to decline jurisdiction.
Facts: Child was born in Texas with multiple drugs in system. Texas CPS created a safety plan for Respondent-Mother and baby to move to Michigan so she would have support of the child’s maternal grandparents and mom would receive services through Michigan DHHS. En route to Michigan, mother and grandparents had a fight, with the end result being the grandparents continued on to Michigan with the baby and left mother behind. The grandparents were in contact with law enforcement, Texas CPS and Michigan CPS the whole time. After they arrived in Michigan, mother asked for the baby to be returned to her, but the grandparents refused and wanted mother to come to Michigan where they would help her obtain substance abuse treatment. Both respondent parents were having difficulty making the trip from Texas to Michigan. Mother had located an in-patient substance facility in Texas and told the Texas CPS worker that the child could stay with grandparents in Michigan. The grandparents eventually obtained a guardianship.
Michigan DHHS filed a petition to remove the child from respondents’ care and asked the trial court to take jurisdiction based on the respondents’ abandonment of the child. The case worker did not investigate the substance abuse program in Texas, did not offer any drug screens, and did not review the Texas drug screens to see if they were positive.
The trial court declined to take jurisdiction and DHHS appealed.
Key Appellate Rulings:
DHHS did not establish that Respondent Parents abandoned the child when the grandparents took the child to Michigan, refused to return the child to the parents, and neither DHHS nor the grandparents helped them travel to Michigan.
The burden was on the petitioner DHHS to prove abandonment. Each of their arguments as to how the parents abandoned the child fail. The parents asked for assistance to travel to Michigan to retrieve the child and DHHS did not provide that assistance. Mother also did not abandon the child when she walked away from the car at the gas station en route to Michigan. Within 10 minutes of mother walking away, the grandparents drove on to Michigan, leaving mother at the gas station without any transportation. The child and mother’s luggage were both in the car. Mother also called the police within three minutes of their departure to report their kidnapping. Furthermore, Mother’s objection to the guardianship is not tantamount to abandonment. Moreover, Mother asked the caseworker how she could regain custody of the child. Neither parent was offered any assistance to help them travel to Michigan to retrieve their child.
Respondent parents did not leave the child without proper care or custody when the grandparents took the child to Michigan over Mother’s protests. The COA stated that “it is clear that the reason for the lack of proper care and custody was because the child was removed from their care without permission or apparent legal authority.” In reviewing the record, “there was no information presented regarding what legal authority Texas had over the child, what Texas CPS and Texas law enforcement did regarding the kidnapping allegations, why the grandparents were instructed to withhold their location from respondent-mother, why the grandparents were encouraged to continue with the child to Michigan, or what authority allowed the grandparents to do so.”
