Reasonable reunification efforts requirement; Aggravated circumstances; MCL 712A.19a(2)(a); MCL 722.638(1) & (2); A parent required to register under the Sex Offenders Registration Act (SORA); MCL 712A.19a(2)(d); Children’s best interests; In re Simpson; Relative placement consideration; In re CJM

The court held that the trial court did not commit reversible error in concluding that reasonable reunification efforts were excused under MCL 712A.19a(2)(d), as respondent-father had been ordered to register as a sex offender due to a prior CSC III conviction. It also found no clear error in the trial court’s findings as to the children’s (KK and AK) best interests. Thus, it affirmed the termination order. The case began after respondent’s “then-girlfriend’s two-year-old child, JT, suffered life-threatening injuries while in his mother’s and respondent’s care.” KK and AK were respondent’s children with his ex-wife. They lived with her, and she had sole legal and primary physical custody, although they “would occasionally visit or stay the night with respondent.” The DHHS sought “jurisdiction over KK and AK and termination of respondent’s parental rights at initial disposition” after it substantiated “several instances of domestic violence against” their mother. The trial court initially found that reasonable reunification efforts were excused due to the aggravated circumstances of “the ‘serious physical abuse’ that JT had suffered[.]” It later recognized that because “JT was neither subject to DHHS’s petition in this case nor KK’s or AK’s sibling,” MCL 722.638(1)(a)(iii) did not apply. But it found that error harmless given respondent’s sex offender status. He did not dispute his CSC III conviction, the SORA registration order, or “that this circumstance existed at the time the [trial] court made its initial determination that reasonable efforts were not required.” He took issue with the fact that the trial court did not expressly find that reasonable efforts were excused under this provision until approximately two years after it had first erroneously “reached that conclusion under MCL 712A.19a(2)(a)[.]” But the trial “court made clear that reasonable efforts were not required under MCL 712A.19a(2)(d) at the initial-dispositional hearing” before terminating his “rights, as it was required to do.” As to his children’s best interests, it found his “continued involvement in violent crimes and substance use, his mistreatment of and unsafe behavior around children with whom he had contact, and his role in” JT’s serious physical abuse, “‘substantially outweigh[ed]’” the relative placement. The record supported its conclusion.