Termination of Parental Rights and Effect on Child Support By G. R. Fernambucq and Charles H. Dunn
An interesting case concerning the effect of a judicial determination terminating an individual’s parental rights and the effect on that individual’s obligation to pay support was decided by the Alabama Supreme Court on September 30, 2009. The case is Ex Parte M.D.C., 2009 ALA. LEXIS 238 (Ala. 2009).
The parties in this case were divorced in February 2003. The mother had a child from a previous marriage. Two children were born of the parties’ marriage. In August 2003, the father pled guilty to three counts of second-degree rape. He was sentenced to prison and has since been released. The rape victim was the mother’s child from a previous marriage. The divorce judgment awarded custody of the parties two children to the mother and ordered the father to pay $540.00 per month in child support. In October 2005, the juvenile court granted the mother’s petition seeking to terminate the father’s parental rights to their two minor children. In January 2007, the state, on behalf of the mother, filed a petition to require the father to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for his alleged failure to pay his child support obligation. The juvenile court ultimately entered an order finding that the father’s obligation to pay child support was extinguished when his parental rights were terminated in October 2005. The mother appealed. The Court of Civil Appeals noted that this case presents an issue of first impression. The majority of the Court of Civil Appeals noted that the Alabama Child Protection Act, which governed the termination of parental rights in 2005, does not address the issue of a parent’s obligation to pay support after his or her parental rights are terminated. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision. On certiorari review, the Supreme Court noted that Judge Moore’s “well written dissent” accurately interprets the law on this subject, and adopted its reasoning. In his dissent, he recognized two long standing principles of statutory construction:
- that words used in a statute are given their commonly understood meaning, and
- that a court is bound to give effect to the legislative purpose behind a statute.
No where in the Alabama Child Protection Act does it suggest that termination of parental rights terminates the obligation to pay child support. Several basic principals of law were applied to the analysis of this decision. A custodial parent has no right to child support, but merely receives support on behalf of the child whose right it is. A judgment terminating parental rights immediately and permanently severs the parent’s rights to custody, control and affiliation with the child. The judgment protects the child from the potential for future harm flowing from the affected parent by forever presenting the parent from asserting any parental rights. Responsible parents should not be forced to choose between filing a petition to terminate the parental rights of an abusive or neglectful co-parent to protect their children or to forgo filing such a petition in order to preserve the children’s right to support. If it was determined that a termination of parental rights terminated an obligation to support, in many cases it could require children to depend on the state and that may be far less remunerative than child support to which they would otherwise be entitled.
A parent has an obligation to provide support. The state has guidelines which clearly take into consideration each party’s ability to provide support. Alabama law actually holds that the only events that terminate child support are the child’s reaching the age of majority, the emancipation of the child, the adoption of the child, and the death of the child or the obligor parent. Case law has previously provided that a parent remains obligated to pay child support even when the parent has no custodial rights and the children refuse visitation, or even when the non-custodial parent has no contact with the child. The duty to pay child support and the right to exercise visitation are not interdependent. Other states have previously held that the mere fact that all parental rights, including the right to visitation, have been terminated does not impact the parent’s duty to support the child.
The decision also noted that in this situation, the juvenile court does not have jurisdiction to terminate a child support obligation that had been previously ordered in a Final Judgment of Divorce from circuit court. The termination of parental rights may give rise to that individual filing a petition to modify and using that as a ground for a request to terminate child support in the divorce matter, however it does not allow the juvenile court to do so. Had the original support order been the result of the juvenile court, such as a paternity suit, juvenile court could have terminated the support obligation.
The Court of Civil Appeals was reversed.
