Child’s best interests; Relative placement; In re Atchley; Adequacy of the trial court’s findings; In re Gentry

Concluding that the trial court appropriately addressed the child’s relative placement in making its best-interests determination on remand, the court held that it did not clearly err in finding that terminating respondent-father’s parental rights was in the child’s best interests. The court previously vacated a termination order and “remanded for further proceedings because the trial court failed to consider the child’s” relative placement. In this appeal, respondent again challenged the trial court’s best-interests finding. The court disagreed. First, it rejected his claim that the trial court erroneously focused on the petition’s allegations “rather than the impact of the termination on the child.” The trial court expressly stated that its focus was on the child, and it “considered the child’s well-being and safety by observing that the evidence demonstrated that the child did not feel safe with respondent because of the sexual assault and that termination would allow the child to recover from the resulting trauma.” As to his complaint that the trial court failed to make any “particularized findings” about the child’s placement with her mother, it “explicitly found that the child was placed with her mother and that such placement weighed against termination. [It] went on to conclude that despite this relative placement, the child’s interests in permanency, stability, and finality weighed more heavily toward termination. Thus, because the trial court explicitly addressed and appropriately weighed relative placement against termination, its findings were adequate to facilitate appellate review.” The court was “not left with a definite and firm conviction that the [trial] court made a mistake” in its best-interests determination. Affirmed.