In the Interest of E.B.-R., Minor Child

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-1632
Filed January 23, 2025

IN THE INTEREST OF E.B.-R.,
Minor Child,

N.W., Father,
Appellant,

B.W., Mother,
Appellant.
________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Korie Talkington,

Judge.

A mother and father separately appeal a juvenile court order terminating

their parental rights. AFFIRMED ON BOTH APPEALS.

G. Brian Weiler, Davenport, for appellant father.

Jennifer Triner Olsen, Davenport, for appellant mother.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Natalie Hedberg, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Brian Patrick Donnelly, Clinton, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor

child.

Considered by Schumacher, P.J., and Badding and Chicchelly, JJ.
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BADDING, Judge.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has been involved

with this family since February 2022, when the child was just one year old. After

more than two years of reunification services, the juvenile court terminated the

parents’ rights under Iowa Code section 232.116(1)(e) and (h) (2024), finding the

“child is in need of permanency and should not have to wait any longer.” We agree

and affirm on both parents’ appeals.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings

The parents’ child,1 who was born in November 2020, has seen little

consistency in his short life. In early 2022, law enforcement executed a search

warrant at the mother’s home and found methamphetamine in her bedroom. The

State petitioned to have the child adjudicated as a child in need of assistance in

March. Although the mother was uncooperative with the department, the child

remained in her custody until May, when the mother brought the child and his then

thirteen-year-old sister to a house where people were using drugs. While they

were there, a shooting took place. Under a safety plan with the mother, the two

children were moved to their maternal great-grandmother’s home. They stayed

there until August, after their father tested negative for drugs. The parents

stipulated to the children’s adjudication, and a September dispositional order

placed them in the father’s custody under the department’s supervision.

1 The parents are married and share two children together—the child involved in

this appeal and a daughter, born in 2009. The mother also has an older child, born
in 2005, from a different relationship. The permanency plan for the middle child
was a guardianship, and the oldest child turned eighteen in 2023, so neither are
involved here.
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But in January 2023, the children were removed from the father’s custody

after he was arrested for five felonies, including third-degree burglary and first-

degree theft. Before his arrest, the father had been avoiding drug testing for the

department and acting erratically. The children were placed with the same foster

family until May, when that family notified the department that they could no longer

care for the children. Since then, the child at issue in this case has been placed

apart from his older sister, moving to three homes before finding one where he

“blossomed,” according to the department’s case manager. The child has been

settled in that home for more than one year. Meanwhile, his parents have

remained unsettled.

The mother was in and out of jail for most of these proceedings. In between

her incarcerations, she was discharged from two outpatient substance-use

treatment programs in 2023. Although she completed a twenty-one-day inpatient

treatment program in December, the mother did not comply with drug testing,

attending just four of the nineteen tests that were offered. She also missed several

visits with the child, who struggled behaviorally after seeing her. And the mother

was sporadically employed, with no stable housing.

The father remained in jail until July 2023, when he pled guilty to first-degree

theft and received a suspended sentence with five years of probation. He started

visits with the children almost immediately after his release and secured housing,

employment, and a substance-use evaluation. But his first drug test after his

release was positive for methamphetamine, and he missed multiple tests after that.

Yet after a permanency hearing in October, the juvenile court granted the parents

a short extension “to work toward reunification,” requiring them to “comply with all
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requests for drug testing,” follow recommendations for substance-use and mental-

health treatment, and otherwise establish stability.

By the end of December, the court found the father had

completely failed to comply with the court’s order. He failed to attend
the scheduled drug tests. He claims that on one occasion he was in
the middle of a work project that he could not leave, and that he did
not receive the second notification. It is time for him to quit playing
games. The court order was clear. If he wants to demonstrate his
sobriety then he must comply.

Because of the parents’ lack of progress, the court changed the permanency goal

for the child to termination of parental rights.

The father tested positive for methamphetamine twice after that order, once

in January 2024 and again in February, although he denied use. At the beginning

of February, the State petitioned to terminate the parents’ rights. The mother was

arrested for possession of methamphetamine, among other charges, in April. She

was still in jail when the termination hearing began the next month. The father’s

circumstances, however, had improved. He had maintained housing since the

beginning of the year and was working as a self-employed contractor. The father

attended nearly every visit offered to him, missing just one in the eight months

before the hearing. And his visits with the child went well. But the father’s

compliance with drug testing remained poor. Although he had a negative urinalysis

in February and a negative sweat patch in April, the father missed tests in March

and May. The case manager testified, “he’s choosing which tests to attend and

which ones not to, so I don’t have consistent drug test results that are negative.”

At the second day of the termination hearing in June, the father was wearing

another sweat patch. The department had not received the results from that test
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because the father had interfered with the removal of the patch by trying to take

pictures of the process. The court denied the father’s request to keep the record

open for the test results, reasoning:

Your motion assumes he’s going to show up, number one. It
assumes he will be tested timely. I have no idea how long I’ll be
waiting, and that delays my decision, which delays permanency for
these children. . . . If it happens to be there before I hit file, I will
consider it, and if not, I’m not going to wait.

Less than two weeks after the hearing, the State moved to reopen the record to

submit additional evidence about the results of that sweat patch. The court granted

that motion and set a hearing. But at the hearing in September, the State withdrew

its motion, and the parties agreed the court should “not consider any docket entries

filed after June 10, 2024.”

On that evidence, the juvenile court terminated both parents’ rights under

Iowa Code section 232.116(1)(e) and (h). The mother and father separately

appeal.

II. Standard of Review

We review terminations of parental rights de novo, using a three-step

analysis that asks whether (1) a statutory ground for termination is satisfied, (2) the

child’s best interests are served by termination, and (3) a statutory exception

applies and should be exercised to preclude termination. In re L.B., 970

N.W.2d 311, 313 (Iowa 2022); see also Iowa Code § 232.116(1)–(3). Our review

is confined to the steps raised by each parent on appeal. In re P.L., 778

N.W.2d 33, 40 (Iowa 2010).
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III. Analysis

The mother’s petition on appeal contains one issue: “The Juvenile Court

erred in finding clear and convincing evidence that it was in the child’s best interest

to terminate parental rights . . . .” Under that issue heading, she challenges each

of the three steps involved in our analysis. But she does so on the father’s behalf,

arguing “there was no clear and convincing evidence that the children could not be

returned safely to [the father]”; the “father was having significant and meaningful

contact with the child”; and termination “is not in the best interest of the child herein

in that he is so very bonded to his father and he has complied with the services

offered to him.” Because the mother lacks standing to assert arguments on the

father’s behalf, we do not consider those arguments and summarily affirm the

termination of her parental rights. See In re C.T., No. 18-2199, 2019 WL 1055897,

at *1 n.1 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 6, 2019) (collecting cases where we “rejected

challenges to termination of one parent’s rights based solely on the assertion that

the child could or should be returned to the other parent”).

Turning to the father’s appeal, he only challenges the sufficiency of the

evidence supporting the statutory grounds for termination. “When the juvenile

court terminates parental rights on more than one statutory ground, we may affirm

the juvenile court’s order on any ground we find supported by the record.” In re

A.B., 815 N.W.2d 764, 774 (Iowa 2012). We find termination of the father’s

parental rights was proper under section 232.116(1)(h).

The father contests the fourth element of that ground, which requires clear

and convincing evidence “that the child cannot be returned to the custody of the

child’s parent[] . . . at the present time.” Iowa Code § 232.116(1)(h)(4); In re D.W.,
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791 N.W.2d 703, 707 (Iowa 2010) (interpreting the statutory language “at the

present time” to mean “at the time of the termination hearing”). The juvenile court

found that element had been met, ruling the father

has never addressed his substance use. He missed many more
tests tha[n] he attended. The court lectured him about the
importance of attending testing in January, but he continued to
routinely miss. Only [the father] knows whether he is sober. That is
because [he] has not taken advantage of the chances he has been
given to provide samples for testing. As stated by [the case
manager], when tests are missed, they are presumed to be positive.

We agree that the father is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt with respect to

tests he declined to submit. See In re R.A., No. 21-0746, 2021 WL 4891011, at *1

(Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 20, 2021) (“We presume these missed tests would have been

positive for illegal substances.”).

The father argues that his “job sometimes interfered with request[s] to drug

test.” But he was self-employed, and the case manager testified that she “tried to

work with his work schedule and schedule them in the evening.” The father also

argues that he complied with all case plan expectations, pointing out that he

obtained substance-use and mental-health evaluations, maintained stable housing

and employment, and complied with his probation requirements. Those efforts,

however, do not outweigh the concerns for the father’s sobriety. As the case

manager explained: “Regardless of . . . how he believes those tests were positive,

they were positive, and he has not demonstrated honesty in his substance use and

has not demonstrated long-term sobriety.”

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the [father’s] history of use.” In re E.H.,

No. 21-0467, 2021 WL 2709486, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. June 30, 2021). The father

refused to acknowledge that history, instead blaming his three positive tests over
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several months on the specter of contamination at the testing center. But the father

presented no evidence of contamination, and we do not find his account credible.

As the case manager testified, “If it was a space that was contaminated, . . .

everybody would be testing positive. There are precautions.” Since the father

refused to admit that he used methamphetamine, he never received any treatment.

This leads us to fear that his use is likely to continue. See id. Because a “parent’s

methamphetamine use, in itself, creates a dangerous environment,” we find

sufficient evidence that the child could not safely be returned to the father’s care.

In re J.P., No. 19-1633, 2020 WL 110425, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 9, 2020).

For these reasons, we affirm the termination of the parents’ rights to their

child.

AFFIRMED ON BOTH APPEALS.