Child’s best interests; Consideration of a child’s placement with “fictive kin”; MCL 712A.13a(1)(j)(ii); Distinguishing In re CJM

Concluding that the child’s foster father was not a relative under § 13a(1)(j), the court held that the “trial court was not required to explicitly consider [the child’s] placement with him before finding that” terminating respondent-mother’s parental rights was in the child’s best interests. Respondent argued “the trial court failed to recognize that” the child’s placement with fictive kin weighed against terminating her rights. She contended that reversal was necessary because it did not explicitly consider the relative placement. The court began with “the threshold question whether [the child’s] foster father satisfies the statutory definition of ‘relative’” in MCL 712A.13a(1)(j), as amended in 2022. Considering the statutory criteria, it determined that he was not the child’s “relative under § (1)(j)(i) because he is not related to her by blood, he and respondent were never married, and he does not share custody of any of” the child’s half-siblings with respondent. As to § (1)(j)(ii), in contrast to the situation in CJM, the record here showed that the child “was placed with her foster father shortly after birth and that respondent’s parental rights were terminated when [the child] was still an infant, just over three months old. Unlike the years of care and bonding between the child and the woman in” CJM, in this case “there was simply no time for [the] foster father to develop a ‘strong positive emotional tie or role in the child’s life’ that would make him her relative under § (1)(j)(ii). Apparently recognizing this lack of time in cases involving infants, our Legislature added the following phrase to § (1)(j)(ii): ‘or the child’s parent’s life if the child is an infant.’” The court found that the record here lacked “evidence of any relationship, let alone a strong positive relationship, between the foster father and respondent.” The court affirmed the termination order.