Typically, custody battles not only involve disputing divorced couples but also between biological parents and a third party, for example, foster parents (Barber et al. 2003). Unlike cases in which biological parents are getting divorced, such that decision making is not merely based on the child’s interests alone, cases involving a third party are decided to base on the biological parents' rights over the child, the place of the non-biological parents in the child's life, the existing family structure and the child's interests (Barber et al. 2003). In this essay, I am going to briefly analyze a case for foster care kids whereby a judge will determine to terminate a parent's rights.
Termination of the parent's rights to their child gets done in cases whereby there is substantial evidence that the natural parent has wholly deserted the child. An example is the case of Stokes v. Arnold, 92; whereby foster parents wanted to adopt three children(siblings) who had been under their care for as long as six years. They had stated that ‘ they and their children had a fundamental interest in their existence as a family. The trial court had previously ruled in their favor. However, the ruling got later reversed by the Tennessee Court of Appeal stating that whatever interest that existed between the foster parents and the kids got completely overshadowed by the biological mother's fundamental liberty interest in custody and the care for her children.
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I felt that the court ruling on the case was unfair (McCann et al. 1996). The foster parents have developed a bond between themselves and the kids especially since all of them are in agreement about being a family.It is therefore devastating that after all the time they have spent caring for the children and building a relationship with them, they still don't stand a chance to become a family as they desire. I have learned that it is utterly essential that courts decide child custody by laying most weight on the child's best interests to avoid emotional and mental distress of the child's development in the later years (McCann et al. 1996). This can be done by keenly analyzing the bonding between either biological or non-biological parents.
Research has shown that most legal cases base their decision making on the doctrines of best interest and the custody outcomes that are most likely to stimulate the conservation of the attachments of a non-biological parent (Barber et al. 2003). Best and non-biased decisions get made when the child's best interests are incorporated together with spread out explanations of the family.
References
Barber, James G.; Delfabbro, Paul H. (2003). Children in Foster Care . New York: Routledge – via Questia (subscription required). pp. 3–4.
Determining the Interests of the Child, supra note 4, at 1.
McCann, JB; James, A; Wilson, S; Dunn, G (1996). "Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the youth in the care system ." BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.)
"Trends in Foster Care and Adoption: FY 2006 - FY 2015" (PDF). June 8, 2016. Retrieved May 11, 2017.
