S.L. v. Department of Children & Families
\nCase No. 4D11-3844<\/p>\n
The trial court rendered an order terminating a mother\u2019s parental rights to her minor child, S.A. S.A., whose father was serving a long sentence of incarceration, was residing with his half-siblings (the mother\u2019s other children) and their father. The Department had sought to terminate both of S.A.\u2019s parents\u2019 rights to him in order to give S.A. permanency. However, the Department had not moved to terminate the mother\u2019s rights to her children that were living with their father. The mother, S.L., appealed, arguing that the trial court\u2019s finding that termination was the least restrictive means of protecting S.A. was not supported by competent substantial evidence. Specifically, the mother argued that termination was not the least restrictive means where the trial court did not also terminate her parental rights to her other children. In support, the mother relied upon In re G.R., 793 So. 2d 988 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001).<\/p>\n
In a written opinion, the Fourth District Court of Appeal (\u201cDCA\u201d) distinguished S.L.\u2019s factual circumstances from those present in In re G.R. The Fourth DCA noted that the facts of S.L.\u2019s case were completely different. Unlike the mother in In re G.R., S.L. had made no progress on her case plan, had not seen S.A. more than a year, and resided out of state. The Fourth DCA therefore affirmed, concluding that the trial court had correctly applied the least restrictive means test as to S.A. individually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S.L. v. Department of Children & Families Case No. 4D11-3844 The trial court rendered an order terminating a mother\u2019s parental rights to her minor child, S.A. S.A., whose father was serving a long sentence of incarceration, was residing with his half-siblings (the mother\u2019s other children) and their father. The Department had sought to terminate both…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1811,1806],"tags":[2264,2386,1932,2387,2388,2221,2389,2390,1912,2391],"class_list":["post-2188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4th-dca-rulings","category-family","tag-appealed","tag-department-of-children-families","tag-fourth-dca","tag-incarceration","tag-minor-child","tag-parental-rights","tag-substantial-evidence","tag-terminate-rights","tag-trial-court","tag-written-opinion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}