NEW JERSEY DIVISION OF YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICES v. S.C.L.

 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-6363-04T46363-04T4

NEW JERSEY DIVISION OF YOUTH

AND FAMILY SERVICES,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

S.C.L.,

Defendant-Appellant.

IN THE MATTER OF THE

GUARDIANSHIP OF

D.A.M.,

A Minor.

_________________________________________________

 

Submitted December 19, 2005 - Decided

Before Judges C.S. Fisher and Yannotti.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division, Family Part, Hudson County, Docket No. FG-09-270-05.

Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (William J. Sweeney, Designated Counsel, on the brief).

Peter C. Harvey, Attorney General, attorney for respondent (Andrea M. Silkowitz, Assistant Attorney General, of counsel; Christina S. Remolina, Deputy Attorney General, on the brief).

Yvonne Smith Segars, Public Defender, attorney for minor (Olivia Belfatto Crisp, Law Guardian, on the brief).

PER CURIAM

S.C.L. gave birth to a son, D.A.M., on February 14, 2004. S.C.L., who was then twenty-two years old, acknowledged a long-standing drug problem. In fact, S.C.L. was found to be positive for cocaine at the time of D.A.M.'s birth. At the time of trial, S.C.L. was incarcerated and awaiting a sentence then anticipated to be a three-year term.

After a trial, Judge Salvatore Bovino found clear and convincing evidence to support all the statutory factors contained in N.J.S.A. 30:4C-15.1 and terminated S.C.L.'s parental rights. N.J.S.A. 30:4C-15.1 mandates that, in order to obtain the termination of parental rights, the Division is required to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that:

(1) The child's health and development have been or will continue to be endangered by the parental relationship;

(2) The parent is unwilling or unable to eliminate the harm facing the child or is unable or unwilling to provide a safe and stable home for the child and the delay of permanent placement will add to the harm;

(3) The division has made reasonable efforts to provide services to help the parent correct the circumstances which led to the child's placement outside the home and the court has considered alternatives to termination of parental rights; and

(4) Termination of parental rights will not do more harm than good.

See also N.J. Div. of Youth & Fam. Serv. v. A.W., 103 N.J. 591, 604-05 (1986).

S.C.L. appealed. Although she has acknowledged on appeal that there was ample evidence to support the judge's findings that the first and third statutory prongs had been satisfied, S.C.L. asserts that there was insufficient evidence for the judge's findings regarding the second and fourth prongs. We reject her contentions and affirm.

As to the second prong, Judge Bovino made, among others, the following findings:

The second prong . . . requires a showing [that] the parent is unwilling or unable to eliminate the harm facing the child or is unable [or] unwilling to provide a safe, stable home for the child. . . . Obviously, [S.C.L.] is willing to provide a safe and stable home, but she is unable to do so. She is willing to eliminate the harm facing the child by virtue of her inability to provide nurture, care for the child due to her drug addiction, but she is unable to do so.

. . . .

Perhaps with education, counseling, intervention, she may be able to parent a child some time in the future, but this child cannot wait indefinitely into the future. [S.C.L.] has clearly established, in my mind, her self-gratification takes priority over everything else in her life. [S]he has been incarcerated for the past eight months and perhaps she's focusing on something different now, but she has neglected her child.

While pregnant, she continued to use drugs, putting him at great risk of harm. After she was released, she chose not to cooperate with the Division [or] get involved in drug treatment. She was unable to establish any pattern of stability in her living arrangement. She was living here and there, as she put it. The person that she named for the father of the child turns out not to be the father of the child. She cannot give any information as to who the father of the child might be. So this child will grow up not knowing from where he came, all because of [S.C.L.'s] irresponsibility.

Additional irresponsibility which establishes that she is unable, unwilling to provide a safe and stable home for herself and a child is the risk that she put her mother at. [S.C.L.] was bailed out on, what I would call, a rather substantial bail, $20,000 in 2003. She was aware of her court date, as she represented to some other court involvement, but knowing that the warrant was outstanding, knowing that her mother was exposed to a financial responsibility of $18,000, she [chose] not to take care . . . of that matter.

In finding that the fourth prong was established by clear and convincing evidence, Judge Bovino recognized that S.C.L.'s contact with the child had been "very minimal." At the time of trial, the child was only sixteen months old and no bonding relationship had formed between S.C.L. and the child -- a fact exacerbated not only by S.C.L.'s sporadic visitation of the child but also by S.C.L.'s subsequent incarceration. As a result, the judge determined that "there would be no harm [to the child] if parental rights were terminated," a conclusion thoroughly justified by the evidence in the record.

The standard of appellate review in such matters requires that we defer to the trial judge's factual findings unless we are convinced they are "so wholly unsupportable as to result in a denial of justice." In re Guardianship of J.N.H., 172 N.J. 440, 472 (2002). After careful review, we conclude that the record contains clear and convincing evidence to support the judge's findings and that he applied the correct legal standards to those findings in terminating S.C.L.'s parental rights.

 
We affirm substantially for the reasons set forth in Judge Bovino's thorough and well-reasoned oral decision.

Although S.C.L. had identified G.M. as the father, a DNA test excluded G.M. as the child's father. The final judgment terminated the parental rights not only of S.C.L. but also of "the father whomever he might be."

(continued)

(continued)

5

A-6363-04T4

RECORD IMPOUNDED

January 6, 2006