SUMMARY: An order restricting the father’s visitation schedule (from several times per week to every month to every other month) significantly impacted his parental right and was thus a final, appealable order. With his incarceration, length of travel to visit and limitation on positive interaction at the facility, the father failed to show that the limitation on visitation was not in the children’s best interests.
The children were adjudication under N.R.S. 43-247(3)(a) after being removed from the parental home due to drug possession and poor conditions. The original visitation plan for the father provided for visits two to four times per week, for 2 to 6 hours each visit. The case plan and court report at the subsequent review hearing reported that the father had entered and left a treatment program earlier in the year, pled guilty to felony drug possession and misdemeanor child abuse and entered an intensive inpatient drug program shortly before the hearing. The father’s visitation was reduced to at least one visit per month for 1 hour and weekly contact following release from treatment. In case plan and court report submitted for the subsequent review hearing six months later, it was reported that the father had been sentenced to consecutive sentences of 16 to 28 months’ incarceration and 1 year incarceration, and would not be released until 9 months after the review hearing. The case plan’s recommendation was that visitation be set at every other month for up to 2 hours at the correctional center. At a contested hearing on the case plan, evidence was received that the visits required 8-hour roundtrip car rides for the children, ages 3 and 4. The visits usually only lasted 45 minutes due to the children’s restlessness, and there were few activities available due to the facility’s rules. The caseworker testified that it would not be in the children’s best interest to increase visitation from one visit every 2 months while the father is incarcerated.
The Nebraska Court of Appeals held that there was a change in the case plan between dispositional orders and that the reduction of the father’s visitation significantly impacted his parental right and was thus a final, appealable order. The appellate court also held that the lower court did not err in approving the case plan reducing the father’s visitation. With his incarceration, length of travel to visit and limitation on positive interaction at the facility, the father failed to show that the limitation on visitation was not in the children’s best interests.