Background
N.B. was born on August 7, 2022, the seventh child of her mother and eighth child of her father. Five days after her birth, the State filed a petition in Vermont’s Family Division to adjudicate her a child in need of care or supervision (CHINS). The petition was grounded in a pattern of domestic violence — including an alleged strangulation of the mother, then eight months pregnant, in front of the couple’s twin daughters — substance abuse concerns, and parents’ failure to meet their other children’s basic needs. N.B.’s older twin sisters had already been removed from the home and returned to foster care following an unsuccessful trial reunification. DCF had been involved with the family for roughly fifteen to twenty years, and none of the parents’ twelve older children remained in their custody.
The CHINS merits hearing was substantially delayed — in part due to a deliberate tactical decision by parents, through counsel, to postpone it while they worked on action steps in the twins’ case plan, with the State indicating it might withdraw the petition if sufficient progress was made. A subsequent trial reunification in early 2023 failed when N.B., then under eight months old, lost weight in parents’ care and gained it back within days of removal. The merits hearing ultimately concluded in December 2023, and the court issued its written CHINS adjudication in May 2024. A disposition hearing was held over three days in December 2025, at which the court found overwhelming evidence of ongoing domestic violence, anger management problems, substance abuse, and parents’ persistent failure — despite years of DCF services and support — to make progress toward reunification.
The family court terminated both parents’ rights at initial disposition, finding by clear and convincing evidence that termination was in N.B.’s best interests. The court expressly found it had “no confidence that either parent would be able to safely parent [N.B.] at any time in the near or even distant future.” Both parents appealed. Mother argued the CHINS adjudication was error and that procedural delays violated her due process rights; father contended the evidence showed he had demonstrated a prospective ability to parent.
The Court’s Holding
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed on all grounds. On the CHINS challenge, the court rejected mother’s argument that the adjudication impermissibly rested on her decision not to be induced within the timeframe her medical providers recommended — a decision she framed as protected under Vermont’s Freedom of Choice Act. The court found the argument unpreserved and, in any event, meritless: the CHINS finding rested entirely on independent grounds (father’s abuse of mother, parents’ inability to manage the twins’ placement, and failure to follow the case plan) that mother did not challenge on appeal.
On the due process claim, the court acknowledged that both the merits and disposition hearings were held well outside the statutory 60-day and 35-day windows, and that such delays can in some circumstances constitute reversible error. Applying harmless-error review, however, it concluded that mother suffered no prejudice. The delays in scheduling the merits hearing were substantially the product of mother’s own tactical choices through counsel. Throughout the period of delay, the court had repeatedly denied mother’s motions for a conditional custody order or unsupervised visits, finding N.B.’s safety could not be assured — meaning an earlier hearing would not have resulted in increased contact. And because the court found no confidence that mother could ever safely parent N.B., even additional time would not have changed the outcome.
On father’s challenge, the court declined to reweigh the evidence. Although father had made some recent behavioral improvements, the family court found those changes inadequate in light of his history of violence — including threats to kill DCF workers and a violent incident involving mother’s teenage daughter — and his continued minimization of his conduct. Father’s appeal amounted to a request that the Supreme Court substitute its judgment for the family court’s, which the court refused to do.
Key Takeaways
- Termination at initial disposition, while rare, is appropriate where there is no reasonable possibility the circumstances leading to CHINS can be remedied within a reasonable time — measured from the child’s perspective, not the parents’.
- Vermont’s statutory timeframes for CHINS merits (60 days from temporary care order) and disposition (35 days from merits adjudication) are directory, not jurisdictional; violations do not automatically void the proceedings but are reviewed for harmless error.
- A parent who, through counsel, tactically agrees to delay merits proceedings forfeits much of the force of a later due process challenge based on that very delay.
- A parent’s recent progress does not compel reversal of a termination order when the family court, in its discretion, finds that progress insufficient to ensure a child’s safety given the full history of the case.
- Vermont’s Freedom of Choice Act does not bar a CHINS adjudication where the court’s finding of risk to the child rests on grounds wholly independent of the parent’s reproductive decisions.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces Vermont’s framework for evaluating procedural delay claims in juvenile proceedings. Practitioners representing parents should note that strategic choices to postpone merits hearings — even when made with the reasonable hope of avoiding a contested adjudication — may significantly undermine any later argument that delay caused prejudice. The opinion also makes clear that harmless-error analysis in this context is substantive: courts will look hard at whether an earlier hearing would actually have produced a different result for the parent, not merely whether the statutory deadlines were missed.
For child-welfare practitioners more broadly, the case illustrates the high bar for reversing termination-at-initial-disposition orders when a parent’s long-standing deficits persist despite comprehensive services. The court’s emphasis on the child’s “immediate need for permanency” — N.B. was three-and-a-half years old and had been in three foster homes — underscores that the child’s developmental timeline, not the parent’s remediation pace, anchors the best-interest analysis.