State of Utah, in the interest of R.G. and A.M.G.

----ooOoo----

State of Utah, in the interest of R.G. and A.M.G.,
persons under eighteen years of age.
______________________________

H.G.C.,
Appellant,

v.

State of Utah,
Appellee.

MEMORANDUM DECISION
(Not For Official Publication)

Case No. 20010397-CA

F I L E D
March 21, 2002 2002 UT App 79 -----

Third District Juvenile, Salt Lake Department

The Honorable Robert S. Yeates

Attorneys:

John E. Laherty, Salt Lake City, for Appellant
Mark L. Shurtleff and John Peterson, Salt Lake City, for Appellee
Martha Pierce, Salt Lake City, Guardian Ad Litem -----

Before Judges Davis, Greenwood, and Orme.

ORME, Judge:

We have determined that "[t]he facts and legal arguments are adequately presented in the briefs and record and the decisional process would not be significantly aided by oral argument." Utah R. App. P. 29(a)(3).

A party challenging the sufficiency of the evidence underlying a court's findings "must ferret out a fatal flaw in the evidence. The gravity of this flaw must be sufficient to convince the appellate court that the court's finding resting upon the evidence is clearly erroneous." West Valley City v. Majestic Inv. Co., 818 P.2d 1311, 1315 (Utah Ct. App. 1991).

Cognizant of the evidence suggesting that appellant had made significant progress toward developing appropriate parenting skills and of the fact that custody of appellant's two older children was returned to her, one might initially be perplexed by the juvenile court's permanent termination of appellant's parental rights relative to R.G. and A.M.G. However, against the backdrop of this family's troubled history, we conclude that sufficient evidence existed for the juvenile court to interpret appellant's recent failure to adhere to juvenile court orders as an indication that appellant had failed "to substantially correct the circumstances that led to the out-of-home placement of [R.G.] and [A.M.G.] and [that she] is not currently in a position to safely care for [R.G.] and [A.M.G.] nor will she be in the foreseeable future."

The juvenile court in this case was presented with evidence suggesting a propensity, on appellant's part, to repeat the same kinds of mistakes that placed her children in precarious positions in 1998. In light of appellant's history, it simply was not clearly erroneous for the juvenile court, in making its findings, to weigh this evidence more heavily than evidence of appellant's parenting progress.

Moreover, the fact that appellant's two older children were returned to her does not establish that insufficient evidence existed for the trial court to make the findings it did relevant to the younger children. While atypical, it is entirely reasonable for a juvenile court to conclude that, while grounds exist for termination of the parent's rights relative to all of her children, actually terminating parental rights is not in the best interest of some of those children. Upon determining that grounds for permanent termination exist, juvenile courts must still separately determine whether it is in the best interest of each child to actually terminate the parent's rights relative to that child. See Utah Code Ann. § 78-3a-402(2) (1996); In re C.K., 2000 UT App 11,¶18, 996 P.2d 1059. In this case, the trial court's findings support its disparate conclusions with respect to the two older and the two younger children.

Because sufficient evidence supports the juvenile court's findings, and because the findings are adequate to explain the court's disposition, we affirm.
 
 

______________________________
Gregory K. Orme, Judge -----

WE CONCUR:
 
 

______________________________
James Z. Davis, Judge
 
 

______________________________
Pamela T. Greenwood, Judge