SUMMARY: Siblings of a child under the custody of the state child welfare system have no standing to appeal denial of the child’s placement in their home.
Meridian, a 3-year-old, was adjudicated as a child within the meaning of N.R.S. 43-247(3)(a) in December 2007, and has been in foster care nearly all of her life. Her assumed father died weeks before she was born. Her mother had earlier relinquished her parental rights to two of Meridian’s siblings, Damon and Aleeah, and they were adopted by a Minnesota couple. Because the initial plan was to reunify Meridian with her mother, Meridian was placed in foster care in Nebraska and remained in one foster home for a majority of her life. In July 2008, the court ordered DHHS obtain a home study of the siblings’ home and in June 2009 the home study highly recommended placement in the siblings’ home. In April 2009, Dr. Glenda Cottam conducted a placement suitability assessment for Meridian and recommended that Meridian be placed in the sibling’s home. In June 2009, the court ordered DHHS to engage Nancy Thompson to formulate a plan for Meridian to have contact with the siblings’ family to determine an effect of change of placement. Thompson observed a visit and recommended that Meridian remain with the current foster family because “while Meridian shares a common genetic makeup with the [siblings], there is no emotional bond built from early-shared experience and common caretaking.” Supra at page 6. Based on that recommendation, DHHS changed its position and recommended adoption by the foster parents.
The mother struggled with chemical dependency and after initially indicating she wanted to relinquish parental rights in February 2009, the State eventually filed a motion for termination of parental rights on September 15, 2009. The siblings’ adoptive parents [hereinafter “siblings”] were allowed to intervene on behalf of the siblings, as were the maternal grandparents and foster parents. The siblings then made a motion for change of placement to allow Meridian to live with them and filed an objection to the DHHS case plan. After a trial, the juvenile court overruled the siblings’ motion for change of placement and terminated the mother’s parental rights. The juvenile court specifically noted that application of Fostering Connections Act to this case was unclear, that Meridian never lived with or knew her siblings, and that a change in placement would certainly cause emotional harm to Meridian. The siblings appealed and the maternal grandparents cross-appealed.
The Nebraska Supreme Court dismissed the appeal for lack of standing. The Nebraska Supreme Court addressed whether the order was a final, appealable order by affecting the siblings’ substantial rights, and whether the siblings had standing to appeal from the order, and therefore analyzed “the existence and nature of any rights which [the siblings] may possess, and how such rights, if any, were affected by the placement determination.” 281 Neb. at 475. Overall, the Supreme Court concluded that the siblings had no cognizable rights to Meridian’s placement under (1) Nebraska statutes, regulations or common law, (2) the constitution or (3) the federal Fostering Connections Act.
Specifically, the Supreme Court noted that Nebraska statutes providing standing do not specifically provide standing for siblings and in other cases where non-listed parties were nevertheless permitted to appeal were allowed to do so in cases where they were not conferred any special entitlements with respect to custody and placement. In this case, the party has to show a personal stake in the controversy in order to have standing to appeal. The Supreme Court concluded that although prior case law and Nebraska public policy acknowledges the importance of sibling relationships and favors its preservation, it doesn’t confer a right to siblings to seek to establish or preserve the sibling relationship; rather, it is done in the context of the best interests determination. As for constitutional interests, the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutionally protected interest to a sibling relationship as there is to a parent-child relationship. Finally, the Supreme Court concluded that the federal Fostering Connections Act does not create substantive legal rights in the siblings but instead places certain responsibilities on a state regarding the child it removes from the parent’s custody.
The Nebraska Supreme Court also concluded that the maternal grandparents lack standing to cross-appeal because any interest with Meridian was eliminated when the mother’s parental rights were terminated.