Joy B. v. Alaska Dept. of Health & Soc. Svcs.
Annotate this CaseA mother and her eight children were routinely severely abused by the father of the younger children while living in another state. The mother fled to Alaska with four of her daughters in 2013. After the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) obtained temporary custody of the children, the mother resisted OCS’s efforts to reunify the family and refused to participate in supervised visits with her daughters. She left Alaska in October 2014, maintaining only sporadic contact with her daughters, and she had not returned. The superior court terminated the mother’s and father’s parental rights with respect to two of the younger daughters, finding that: the children were in need of aid due to abandonment and other statutory factors; that the parents had not remedied the conduct that made the children in need of aid; that OCS had made reasonable efforts toward reunification; and that termination was in the daughters’ best interests. The mother appealed the termination of her parental rights but did not appeal the superior court’s finding that her children were initially in need of aid. Finding that the superior court's judgment was amply supported by the record, the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.