Background
Jewelyette M. was born in 2015 and immediately placed in the custody of the Commissioner of Children and Families after testing positive for opiates at birth. She was adjudicated neglected, her mother’s parental rights were terminated in May 2017, and her father spent much of her early life incarcerated. Jewelyette was placed with foster parents John N. and Diana N. shortly after her mother’s rights were terminated. When the father moved to revoke Jewelyette’s commitment in 2021 and the commissioner sought to transfer Jewelyette to her paternal aunt’s care, the foster parents intervened. After years of contested proceedings, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s removal of the foster parents as intervenors — overruling the Appellate Court’s decision in In re Ryan C. — and remanded the case. In re Jewelyette M., 351 Conn. 511, 332 A.3d 207 (2025).
On remand in April 2025, the trial court appointed the commissioner as Jewelyette’s statutory parent. The foster parents’ attorney did not object, later explaining she mistakenly believed no other option was available. The commissioner filed an adoption petition in May 2025, and the foster parents were not served with notice. Once they learned of the petition, the foster parents filed a timely motion to open the statutory-parent appointment on June 2, 2025 — within four months as required by General Statutes § 52-212a — asserting their counsel’s error and challenging the appointment as exceeding the scope of the remand order.
Despite the foster parents’ attorney bringing the pending motion to the trial court’s attention before the adoption hearing, the trial court proceeded and granted the adoption petition on June 5, 2025. It then held a hearing on the motion to open on June 18, 2025, and denied it as moot, reasoning that no practical relief could be granted once Jewelyette had been adopted.
The Court’s Holding
The Connecticut Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s denial of the motion to open and remanded for a hearing on its merits. The court held that a trial court with jurisdiction must consider and decide all motions properly placed before it, and that only an extreme, compelling situation would justify a refusal to do so. The foster parents’ motion was timely under § 52-212a and was brought to the trial court’s attention before the adoption hearing commenced; the trial court therefore had both the jurisdiction and the obligation to address it before proceeding with the adoption.
The court found that the trial court’s handling of the competing proceedings was tantamount to a refusal to consider the motion. By deliberately declining to pause or reschedule the adoption to allow for a ruling on the motion to open, and then denying that motion as moot on account of the very adoption it had permitted to proceed, the trial court “abdicated its fundamental obligation to decide all matters properly presented to it,” citing Ramin v. Ramin, 281 Conn. 324 (2007). The circumstances here — particularly the significant effect a ruling on the motion to open could have had on the adoption — required the trial court to adjudicate the motion first.
The Supreme Court declined to order the trial court to actually open the adoption decree, finding such a directive premature. Instead, it directed the trial court on remand to hold a hearing on the motion to open and to conduct a best-interest-of-the-child analysis in deciding whether to grant relief, drawing on the principles reflected in General Statutes § 45a-719.
Key Takeaways
- A Connecticut trial court lacks discretion to decline to consider a timely, properly filed motion on grounds of judicial efficiency or docket management, even when a competing proceeding is imminent.
- When a pending motion to open could materially affect an upcoming adoption, a trial court must adjudicate the motion before proceeding with the adoption — not after, where the adoption itself would render the motion moot.
- The Supreme Court stopped short of ordering the adoption decree opened, leaving that determination to the trial court on remand after a full merits hearing that incorporates a best-interest-of-the-child analysis.
- Attorney mistake — here, failure to object to the statutory-parent appointment due to a mistaken belief about available options — was raised as a ground for opening the judgment and must be addressed on the merits.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the procedural rights of foster parents as intervenors in Connecticut child welfare proceedings. Courts cannot effectively extinguish a properly filed motion by racing through a subsequent proceeding that renders the earlier motion moot — particularly in the high-stakes context of adoption, where the consequences for all parties are permanent. Practitioners representing foster parents or other intervenors should document every effort to bring pending motions to the court’s attention before irreversible orders are entered.
The case also signals the continuing ripple effects of the court’s 2025 ruling overruling In re Ryan C., which had broadly curtailed foster parent intervention rights. With foster parents now more firmly positioned as legitimate intervenors in dispositional proceedings, trial courts in Connecticut will need to be more attentive to pending motions from those parties before taking steps — like adoption — that could permanently foreclose relief.