In the Interest of W.G., Minor Child

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 25-1916
Filed April 1, 2026
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In the Interest of W.G., Minor Child,
K.M.,
Potential-Intervenor-Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County,
The Honorable Angeline Johnston, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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K.M., Cedar Falls, self-represented potential-intervenor-appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Tamara Knight, Assistant Attorney
General, attorneys for appellee State.

Robin L. Himes of Linn County Advocate, Cedar Rapids, attorney and
guardian ad litem for minor child.
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Considered without oral argument
by Ahlers, P.J., and Buller and Sandy, JJ.
Opinion by Buller, J.

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BULLER, Judge.

In this case, we are asked: Can a biological parent whose rights to a
child were terminated later intervene in the courts when that child is back in
the juvenile-court system as a child in need of assistance (CINA)? We answer
no, at least on the facts present here—where the biological mother has no
recent relationship with the child. And we address an issue with artificial
intelligence hallucinating case citations before assuming without deciding we
can reach the merits.

BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
In 2020, we affirmed on appeal the termination of K.M.’s parental
rights to two children, including the child now known as W.G. In re A.M.,
No. 20-0116, 2020 WL 1881109, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 15, 2020).
Following termination of K.M.’s rights, W.G. was adopted. Then, during a
2025 CINA case relating to that placement, W.G. was removed from his then-
legal parents and they consented to termination of their rights.

At some point during this latest CINA case, the Iowa Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) sent notice of case developments to
K.M. HHS now says that notice was sent in error. Regardless, K.M.
subsequently moved to intervene, claiming she should be considered a
relative of W.G. despite termination of her parental rights. The county
attorney and W.G.’s guardian ad litem both resisted. Following multiple
hearings, due in part to recusal of the first juvenile judge at K.M.’s request,
the juvenile court denied her motion to intervene under the relevant
statutory provisions and rules of civil procedure.

As to the statutory bases, the juvenile court recognized parties
generally may intervene in juvenile cases if they have a statutory right to be

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considered for custody. See In re B.B.M., 514 N.W.2d 425, 427–28
(Iowa 1994). As relevant here, the court considered whether K.M. was an
“adult relative” under Iowa Code section 232.117(3)(b) (2025) or “fictive
kin” under 232.117(3)(c). By definition, a “relative” does not include a parent
(of the child or a sibling) whose parental rights to the child at issue were
previously terminated. Iowa Code § 232.2(60). So the court ruled out the
first provision. As for the second, “ʻfictive kin’ means an adult person who is
not a relative of a child but who has an emotionally positive significant
relationship with the child or the child’s family.” Id. § 232.2(24); cf. In re L.P.,
__ N.W.3d ___, ___, 2026 WL 705431, at *10–12 (Iowa 2026) (discussing
“fictive kin”). K.M. has no meaningful relationship with W.G. and hasn’t
since termination. So the juvenile court ruled out this provision too.

As for the rules of civil procedure, the juvenile court noted it had some
discretion to permit K.M. to intervene even if she did not meet the statutory
definitions. See Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.407(1). The court considered K.M.’s
potential interest, including what if any of her legal rights the proceedings
might affect. See In re A.G., 558 N.W.2d 400, 403 (Iowa 1997); B.B.M., 514
N.W.2d at 427–30. And the court concluded that K.M. lacked any definite
interest that would support intervention because her parental rights to W.G.
were terminated.

K.M. appeals pro se.1

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We assume without deciding that K.M.’s appeal of the motion-to-intervene
ruling may proceed as a matter of right or by discretionary review. We have some concern
about the potential consequences of recognizing appeal as a matter of right in these
circumstances, as we do not believe the General Assembly contemplated a parent whose
rights were terminated could file endless motions to intervene or as-of-right appeal the
same. Since neither party contests appellate jurisdiction, we leave this question for
another day, and we grant extraordinary review to the extent necessary.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HALLUCINATED
CASE CITATIONS
After this case was transferred to our court, we discovered that K.M.’s
petition on appeal appeared to have been drafted by or with the assistance of
generative artificial intelligence (AI). It included at least one citation to a non-
existent Iowa appellate decision and asserted multiple propositions of law
that were nowhere to be found in the cited authorities. We recently addressed
this issue in another case. See In re R.A, No. 24-1629, 2025 WL 2793560,
at *2–4 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 1, 2025). Most pertinent here, we note that using
AI in legal matters carries the risk of AI “hallucinating” or fabricating legal
authorities that do not actually exist. See Thomas A. Mayes Artificial
Intelligence, Special Education, and the Law: Risks, Rewards, and Opportunities
for Leadership, 20 J. Bus. & Tech. L. 115, 121–22 (2025) (“[AI] may
ʻsometimes even make up facts.’ This includes fabricating case citations,
even if the proposition it is citing the case for is correct or misstating the
holding of a case that exists.” (footnotes omitted)).

Like in R.A., we entered an order here directing K.M. to file copies of
the problematic cases and providing that, if she was unable to do so, she was
required to disclose whether she used AI to draft her petition on appeal. In
her response to the court’s order, K.M. admitted that the case we believed to
be hallucinated was in fact “non-existent” and her citation “d[id] not
correspond to any Iowa appellate decision.” She also admitted that AI led her
to “attribut[e] specific propositions” of law to a case in which those
propositions “do not appear.” And she disclosed that she prepared the
petition using the paid version of the AI tool Perplexity. See generally What Is
Perplexity Pro?, Perplexity: Perplexity Help Center (Mar. 12, 2026),
https://perma.cc/5DAL-2LXN.

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K.M. went on to apologize to the court and opposing party, and she
said that she believed she had verified the AI’s legal citations but now
understood she “made mistakes.” She wrote that she “accept[ed] full
responsibility for these errors.” And that she “underst[ood] that it is [her]
duty—even as a pro se litigant—to independently verify that all case citations
are real, correctly cited, and accurately described before filing them with the
Court.”

On her duty, K.M. is correct as a matter of law: even self-represented
litigants must “independently verify the authenticity and veracity of all
sources and assertions” in their court filings. See Luke v. Dep’t of Health and
Hum. Servs., 29 N.W.3d 635, 636 (Iowa Ct. App. 2025). This is because “Iowa
law dictates that [a pro se] brief is judged by the same standard as a brief filed
by an Iowa lawyer. The law does not judge by two standards, one of lawyers
and another for non-lawyers.” In re Est. of DeTar, 572 N.W.2d 178, 180 (Iowa
Ct. App. 1997) (internal citation omitted). While we appreciate that K.M. has
expressly vowed, going forward, to independently check and verify all
citations in her filings, that is the bare minimum we expect from litigants.

In her response, K.M. recognized that filing pleadings with fabricated
citations is a serious matter and undermines the “integrity of the judicial
process.” We agree. K.M.’s fabricated citation has caused substantial
expenditure of judicial resources and delayed resolution of this appeal.

Last, K.M. asks that we allow her to “withdraw” her fabricated
citation and decide this appeal on the merits. We think we would be justified
in striking the entirety of her petition on appeal and dismissing the appeal or
summarily affirming the ruling below on that basis. Cf. id. at 181 (“We are not
bound to consider a party’s position when the brief fails to comply with the
Iowa Rules of Appellate Procedure.”). And in R.A., the sanction we imposed

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included striking the entirety of the problematic brief. 2025 WL 2793560,
at *2–4. However, as a matter of grace and in an exercise of our discretion,
we elect a lesser sanction here. We strike the problematic portions of K.M.’s
petition on appeal and consider only the arguments we can discern without
the taint of the fabricated and false citations. We thus assume without
deciding we can reach the merits, in part to provide finality on this issue to
the child affected by this juvenile proceeding.

MERITS
Having finished our detour to address the briefing misconduct, we
review the juvenile court’s ruling for “correction of errors at law, giving some
deference to the district court’s discretion.” A.G., 558 N.W.2d at 403. After
an independent review of the record, we agree with the juvenile court’s
statutory and rules-based analysis and discern no abuse of discretion.

A biological parent who has no legal or recent relationship with a child
does not qualify as either an “adult relative” or “fictive kin” as those terms
are used in chapter 232. Nor does such a biological parent have a sufficient
legal interest in the proceedings to warrant intervention under the rules of
civil procedure. As a result, we affirm denial of K.M.’s motion to intervene
under these circumstances.

In addition to the statutory and rules-based arguments, we also
explicitly reject K.M.’s challenge concerning conduct of the first (recused)
juvenile judge. K.M. made no objection below to the second judge
conducting a hearing, judicially noticing the prior filings, and ruling on the
merits of her motion. Therefore any allegation that the second judge’s ruling
was somehow tainted by the alleged problems with the first judge is

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unpreserved and cannot be considered by us on appeal. Meier v. Senecaut, 641
N.W.2d 532, 537 (Iowa 2002).

Last, we observe that many of K.M.’s scattershot complaints are
unpreserved or not properly brought in this appeal from denial of her motion
to intervene. For example, the legal preference for placing siblings together
is irrelevant to that order, as W.G.’s placement is not before this court. And
because she has no parental rights to W.G., HHS had no duty to make
reasonable efforts toward reunifying K.M. with W.G., and we have nothing
on that issue to review. Similarly, whether HHS correctly or incorrectly gave
K.M. notice of the CINA case has nothing to do with the legal question of
whether she may be a statutory or rules-based intervenor. To the extent K.M.
makes any other challenges we do not expressly reject in this opinion, we
deny them as meritless, unpreserved, waived, or some combination of those.

DISPOSITION
Based on K.M.’s court-ordered response addressing fabricated and
inaccurate case citations generated by AI, we strike the portions of her
petition on appeal containing the problematic citations. Assuming without
deciding we can reach the merits of her argument, we affirm the juvenile
court’s denial of K.M.’s motion to intervene.

AFFIRMED.

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