CourtListener 10742201

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Electronically Filed
Intermediate Court of Appeals
CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX
25-NOV-2025
08:09 AM
Dkt. 158 SO

NO. CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX and CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX

IN THE INTERMEDIATE COURT OF APPEALS
OF THE STATE OF HAWAI‘I

CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX
IN THE INTEREST OF B.C. and O.C.

APPEAL FROM THE FAMILY COURT OF THE FIRST CIRCUIT
(CASE NO. FC-S 21-00076)

CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX
IN THE INTEREST OF S.C.

APPEAL FROM THE FAMILY COURT OF THE FIRST CIRCUIT
(CASE NO. FC-S 21-00165)

SUMMARY DISPOSITION ORDER
(By: Nakasone, Chief Judge, Leonard, and Wadsworth, JJ)

In this consolidated appeal, Mother-Appellant (Mother)
appeals from the March 21, 2024 Order(s) Terminating Parental
Rights (TPR Order) entered by the Family Court of the First
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Circuit (Family Court) 1 in case numbers FC-S No. 21-00076 and
FC-S No. 21-00165. We affirm.
Mother raises seven points of error on appeal:
(1) she disputes multiple findings of fact (FOFs), and
(2) conclusions of law (COLs), and she contends (3) Petitioner-
Appellee Department of Human Services (DHS) failed to exercise
reasonable reunification efforts, (4) the Family Court violated
her due process rights by disallowing testimony of her sister at
trial, (5) DHS violated her due process rights by not making
reasonable efforts to prevent the initial removal of Mother's
children from her custody, (6) the Family Court violated her due
process rights by having her arrested, and (7) her service plans
and the October 5, 2022 Permanent Plan failed to take into
account the family's Jehovah's Witness religion.
Upon careful review of the record and the briefs
submitted by the parties and having given due consideration to
the arguments advanced and the issues raised, we resolve
Mother's arguments as follows.
Under Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS) § 587A-33(a)
(2018), a family court may grant a motion to terminate parental
rights where: (1) the parent "is not presently willing and able
to provide the parent's child with a safe family home, even with
the assistance of a service plan"; (2) "[i]t is not reasonably
foreseeable" that the parent "will become willing and able to
provide the child with a safe family home, even with the
assistance of a service plan"; and (3) "[t]he proposed permanent
plan is in the best interests of the child." A "family court
possesses wide discretion in making its decisions and those
decisions will not be set aside unless there is a manifest abuse

1 The Honorable Natasha R. Shaw presided.

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of discretion." In re AA, 150 Hawai‘i 270, 283, 500 P.3d 455,
468 (2021) (brackets and citation omitted).
The family court's determinations with respect to (1)
whether a child's parent is willing and able to provide a
safe family home for the child and (2) whether it is
reasonably foreseeable that a child's parent will become
willing and able to provide a safe family home within a
reasonable period of time present mixed questions of law
and fact; thus, inasmuch as the family court's
determinations in this regard are dependant upon the facts
and circumstances of each case, they are reviewed on appeal
under the clearly erroneous standard.

In re JM, 150 Hawai‘i 125, 137, 497 P.3d 140, 152 (App. 2021)
(citation modified).
(1) & (2) With the exception of FOF 132, Mother
provides no specific arguments challenging individual FOFs and
COLs, stating only that she objects to the characterizations
therein and/or that the findings are conclusory in nature, but
she challenges them to avoid being bound by them on appeal. We
do not address challenges not accompanied by specific arguments.
See Hawai‘i Rules of Appellate Procedure (HRAP) Rule 28(b)(7).
As to FOF 132, Mother contends the record lacks any evidence
that she threatened "to bring in drums and other musical
instruments into the courtroom during the decisions hearing,
which caused Mother to miss the Decision Hearing." The decision
hearing was for the Family Court to announce its decision after
trial, and any purported error therein would be harmless.
See Hawai‘i Family Court Rule 61 (disregarding error "that does
not affect the substantial right of the parties").
(3) Mother contends the termination of her parental
rights is the proximate result of the Family Court and DHS
violating her due process rights. Mother points to her
"unlawful" arrest as a due process violation. Mother claims her
mental health "issues took a turn for the worse" after being

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separated from her children and being denied contact with them
after the Family Court suspended visitation. She claims she was
not provided a reasonable opportunity to complete services
because DHS and the Family Court could not decide "what those
services were"; her mental health providers indicated she "posed
no risk of harm to herself or others"; DHS made no efforts to
maintain contact between the children and Mother and made no
findings to support its position that such contact was unsafe,
as required under HRS § 587A-3.1(a)(5)(A) (2018); the Family
Court's order that Mother could restart visitation after
completing a psychological assessment and progressing in mental
health services was impossible to comply with because the
psychological evaluation providers refused the referral for
retaking her assessment; and visitation was never allowed even
after the Family Court lifted the suspension of visitation at
DHS and the Guardian Ad Litem's discretion.
"[P]arents have a substantive liberty interest in the
care, custody, and control of their children protected by the
due process clause of article I, section 5 of the Hawai‘i
Constitution." In re Doe, 99 Hawai‘i 522, 533, 57 P.3d 447, 458
(2002). "[P]rocedural due process of law requires notice and an
opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful
manner before governmental deprivation of a significant liberty
interest." State v. Bani, 97 Hawai‘i 285, 293, 36 P.3d 1255,
1263 (2001) (citations omitted). "DHS is under an obligation to
provide a reasonable opportunity to parents through a service
plan to reunify the family" and "to make reasonable efforts to
reunite parent and child." In re Doe, 100 Hawai‘i 335, 343,
60 P.3d 285, 293 (2002) (citations omitted). However, "when the
rights of parents and the welfare of their children are in

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conflict, the welfare of the minor children must prevail." In
re Doe Child., 85 Hawai‘i 119, 125, 938 P.2d 178, 184 (App. 1997)
(citation omitted). The Hawai‘i Supreme Court has defined a safe
family home as "a family home in which the child's parents or
legal custodian can adequately provide for the child's physical
and psychological health and welfare and thereby adequately
protect the child from harm, be it actual, imminent, or
threatened." In re Doe, 95 Hawai‘i 183, 194, 20 P.3d 616, 627
(2001) (citations omitted).
The record reflects that Mother consistently violated
DHS's various safety plans and behaved in an unsafe manner in
the children's presence. She attempted to forcibly remove the
children from their placement with maternal aunt Lehua,
resulting in an all-night standoff where she locked herself and
the children in the bathroom. She later attempted to forcibly
remove the children from DHS custody during a July 5, 2022 visit
at DHS offices, causing a verbally aggressive scene, which
ultimately resulted in Honolulu Police Department arresting her
for custodial interference. Mother's visitation could not
thereafter resume as she consistently failed to show that she
understood the danger posed by her actions, as assessed by two
independent Multidisciplinary Teams. Mother cites no authority
that termination of parental rights is improper where allegedly
improper actions taken by DHS and the Family Court to protect
the children caused a parent to "take a turn for the worse."
Mother points to no specific instance of DHS and the Family
Court's purported inability to decide services she needed.
Neither the Family Court nor DHS insisted on a second
psychological evaluation after Mother's evaluation provider
recommended against it. Mother's mental health provider's
opinion that she was not at "imminent risk of danger to self or
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others" referred to the criteria for involuntary hospitalization
under HRS § 334-60.2 (2022), and was not a clinical endorsement
that Mother had resolved her safety issues. Mother's reliance
on HRS § 587A-3.1(a)(5)(A) (2018) is misplaced, as that statute
governs the rights of children, not parents. Mother fails to
show that she was denied due process inasmuch as she was offered
multiple opportunities over a period of two years to participate
in and complete necessary services to address her safety issues,
and her parental rights were terminated only after a trial in
which she had a further opportunity to demonstrate she had
resolved her safety issues but failed to do so. See In re G.H.,
Nos. 29187, 29188, 2009 WL 1426786, at *2 (Haw. App. May 22,
2009) (SDO) ("The two-year time limit [in HRS § 587A-33(a)(2)]
is the maximum a parent is allowed within which to demonstrate
that the parent can provide a safe home, not the minimum.").
(4) Mother contends the permanent plan is required to
explain how it will allow her to maintain connections with the
birth family, and thus, the Family Court violated her due
process rights when it denied her request to have her sister
Lehua testify as a witness at trial. Because Mother fails to
explain what Lehua would have testified to, the court cannot
determine whether it was relevant, and thus, whether Mother's
due process rights were violated. See Kakinami v. Kakinami,
127 Hawai‘i 126, 144 n.16, 276 P.3d 695, 713 n.16 (2012) (noting
that the appellate court may "disregard a particular contention
if the appellant makes no discernible argument in support of
that position" (citation omitted)); see also HRAP Rule 28(b)(7)
("Points not argued may be deemed waived.").
(5) Mother contends DHS violated her due process
rights by failing to make reasonable efforts to prevent the
original removal of her children, which started a "cascade of

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events" culminating in Mother losing custody a second time,
prohibited from contacting the children, and ultimately
attempting suicide.
Mother makes no specific due process violation
argument regarding a denial of notice and an opportunity to be
heard. See HRAP Rule 28(b)(7); Ito v. Invs. Equity Life Holding
Co., 135 Hawaiʻi 49, 74, 346 P.3d 118, 143 (2015) ("Where an
appellant makes general assertions of a due process violation,
without further elaboration or citation to authority, the court
cannot reach a reasoned conclusion, and the due process argument
is deemed waived." (citation omitted)). Mother fails to
identify any authority supporting her contention that the
allegedly improper removal of the children in early 2021 is the
legal cause of her inability to demonstrate throughout the case
— and eventually at the 2023 trial — that she could provide a
safe and secure family home. Moreover, the record indicates
Mother was reunified with the children after the initial
removal, but she again failed to demonstrate that the children
could be safe in her care.
(6) Mother contends the Family Court violated her due
process rights when it issued a bench warrant and had her
arrested, which caused her to lose custody again. Mother claims
that neither she nor her counsel were properly served with the
hearing notice for DHS's motion for immediate review that served
as the basis for finding her in contempt.
The Family Court found that the warrant was served to
facilitate the locating and securing of the children by DHS
after Mother indicated she was voiding the family supervision
arrangement and did not respond to DHS's efforts to contact and
locate her. Even if the arrest was improper, Mother fails to
articulate a due process violation with respect to the

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termination of her parental rights, inasmuch as she fails to
establish causation between the allegedly improper arrest and
her inability to demonstrate throughout the case and eventually
at trial that she could provide a safe and secure family home.
(7) Mother contends the Family Court erred in not
crafting service plans and a permanent plan that took the
family's religion as Jehovah's Witnesses into account. She
claims DHS repeatedly referred Mother to Catholic Charities
services despite her prior objections, which shows that DHS
never had an interest in giving "full and careful" consideration
to her religious values. Mother argues that the current
resource caregivers are in the military, which Mother objected
to on religious grounds; and the Permanent Plan gave no
consideration to a cultural connection to the Jehovah's
Witnesses community or the children's native Hawaiian heritage.
HRS § 587A-32(a)(4) (2018) requires that a permanent
plan "[e]stablish other related goals" relating to the
children's "relationship with [their] birth family" and
"cultural connections[.]" The permanent plan does not need to
identify a prospective adoptive placement. See In re S.L.,
No. CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX, 2025 WL 101699, at *3 (Haw. App. Jan. 15,
2025) (SDO) ("Though . . . a pre-termination permanent plan may
identify a proposed permanent placement as part of its
permanency goal, it is not required to do so, as the final
determination of permanent placement is not required to be
decided until after termination." (citation omitted)); In re SP,
No. CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX, 2014 WL 1658601, at *1 (Haw. App. Apr. 25,
2014) (SDO) ("Specification of adoptive parents is not required
in a proposed permanent plan."). The record indicates DHS
previously attempted to place the children with several of
Mother's relatives under family supervision, but this placement

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became untenable because Mother continued to violate the various
safety plans. The record also shows that DHS referred Mother to
service providers that are not Catholic Charities, and that DHS
reached out to other relatives, but none were willing to serve
as a permanent placement option for the children.
In sum, Mother fails to show that the Family Court
manifestly abused its discretion in terminating her parental
rights. See In re AA, 150 Hawai‘i at 283, 500 P.3d at 468.
Therefore, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the March 21,
2024 TPR Order entered by the Family Court in case numbers FC-S
No. 21-00076 and FC-S No. 21-00165 are affirmed.
DATED: Honolulu, Hawai‘i, November 25, 2025.
On the briefs:
/s/ Karen T. Nakasone
Jacob G. Delaplane,
Chief Judge
Court-Appointed Counsel,
for Mother-Appellant.
/s/ Katherine G. Leonard
Associate Judge
Philip Dureza,
Julio C. Herrera,
/s/ Clyde J. Wadsworth
Deputy Attorneys General,
Associate Judge
for Petitioner-Appellee.

Brandon K. Eugenio,
for Guardian Ad Litem-Appellee
Court-Appointed Special
Advocates Program.