Stepparent adoption; Termination of parental rights under MCL 710.51(6); “Regular & substantial support” for purposes of MCL 710.51(6)(a); Incarcerated parent; In re Caldwell; In re MSL

Holding that the trial court’s focus on the impact on the child of what support respondent-father might be able to provide was erroneous in light of MSL, the court vacated its decision ruling that petitioners could not satisfy MCL 710.51(6)(a), and remanded for a proper analysis. The trial court denied petitioners-mother and stepfather’s “request to terminate respondent-father’s parental rights to the child under MCL 710.51(6) and” dismissed their petition for stepparent adoption. The issue on appeal was “what constitutes ‘regular and substantial’ support for purposes of MCL 710.51(6)(a) in the context of an incarcerated parent whose ability to provide support for his or her child is severely limited by indigency resulting from incarceration.” In determining respondent’s ability to aid in providing the child with regular and substantial support, the trial court “considered his income, expenses, and finances in light of his incarceration and found that he had modest prison earnings that were ‘quickly consumed’ by his purchases of essential personal items. However, [it] did not explicitly find that the evidence established that [he] did not have the requisite ‘ability to support, or assist in supporting,’ his child under MCL 710.51(6)(a).” It instead erroneously “focused on the substantive impact of the support on the child and concluded that respondent could manage only ‘symbolic support’ for the child falling short of making ‘a meaningful difference’ in the child’s life, and therefore was not able to provide ‘substantial’ support for purposes of” the statute. Pursuant to MSL, “the proper focus in evaluating whether support is ‘substantial’ for purposes of MCL 710.51(6)(a) is on the parent’s ability to pay, not the impact of support on the child’s life.” The court also rejected respondent’s reliance on “Caldwell as establishing a brightline earnings threshold below which a noncustodial parent cannot be shown capable of providing substantial support.” It directed the trial court on remand to redetermine whether he “was able to provide substantial support for the two-year lookback period by considering respondent’s income, finances, and situation from [his] standpoint, rather than the extent to which [his] potential support would have affected the child’s life.”