Background
Nevaeh T. was removed from her mother’s custody in March 2023 at age ten after school staff reported concerns about her welfare, she disclosed sexual abuse by a household acquaintance, and the Department of Children and Families found her home in deplorable condition. Her father, Dennis M., had severed all contact with Nevaeh when she was approximately five years old; she did not even know he was alive until late 2023. He had been continuously incarcerated since November 2020 following a 2021 conviction for sexually assaulting his then-girlfriend’s minor daughter in 2017, for which he received an eighteen-year sentence (suspended after eight years and five months) followed by ten years of probation, and was placed on the state sex offender registry.
After the department informed Nevaeh of her father’s existence, monthly supervised prison visits began in December 2023. Nevaeh and Dennis shared what the trial court characterized as a congenial relationship during those visits, though on multiple occasions in 2025 Nevaeh chose not to attend scheduled visits. Nevaeh, then thirteen, expressed a desire to be adopted by her therapeutic foster mother — with whom she had lived since May 2023 — and stated she did not want in-person posttermination contact with her father but was open to letters and phone calls. The foster mother adamantly opposed any posttermination contact order and indicated it might cause her to reconsider adopting Nevaeh.
The Commissioner of Children and Families petitioned to terminate the parental rights of both parents. Just before trial, Dennis filed a motion for a posttermination visitation or contact order. After a three-day trial in July and August 2025, the Superior Court terminated Dennis’s parental rights on October 31, 2025 — a ruling he did not challenge on appeal — and denied his motion for posttermination visitation or contact. Dennis appealed solely on the contact-order denial.
The Court’s Holding
The Connecticut Appellate Court affirmed the trial court’s denial of posttermination contact, holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that a posttermination contact order was not “necessary or appropriate to secure the welfare, protection, proper care and suitable support” of Nevaeh under General Statutes § 46b-121(b)(1). The court applied the abuse-of-discretion standard and reviewed the trial court’s factual findings for clear error, finding neither.
The court rejected Dennis’s argument that the trial court was required to give heightened or controlling weight to Nevaeh’s expressed openness to letters and phone calls. Relying on In re Ava W., 336 Conn. 545 (2020), and In re Annessa J., 343 Conn. 642 (2022), the court reaffirmed that a child’s wishes are merely one of several nonexclusive factors a trial court may consider — not a factor that must be elevated above the others. Because no Connecticut Supreme Court precedent requires any particular weighting among the Ava W. factors, the appellate court declined to impose one.
The court also emphasized that the “necessary or appropriate” standard is deliberately more stringent than a best-interests-of-the-child standard. The trial court had weighed Dennis’s status as a convicted child sex offender, Nevaeh’s extensive history of sexual and physical abuse, the potential harm to her emotional and physical well-being, and — critically — the risk that a contact order could jeopardize her adoption by the only realistic prospective adoptive parent. Those findings amply supported denial of the motion under the demanding statutory standard.
Key Takeaways
- The “necessary or appropriate” standard of § 46b-121(b)(1) governs posttermination visitation motions in Connecticut and is more stringent than the best-interests standard; courts should expect such orders to be granted only rarely.
- A child’s stated preference regarding posttermination contact is a permissible but non-mandatory factor; trial courts retain broad discretion to weigh it against competing considerations, and appellate courts will not reweigh that balance.
- A convicted sex offender parent’s criminal history, combined with the child’s own history of sexual victimization, can independently justify denial of a posttermination contact order even where some clinical evidence supports continued contact.
- The potential impact on adoption prospects — including a prospective adoptive parent’s willingness to proceed — is a legitimate and potentially dispositive factor in the posttermination visitation analysis.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the high bar Connecticut courts apply when a parent seeks court-ordered contact after termination of parental rights. Practitioners representing children or petitioners can point to In re Nevaeh T. for the proposition that a child’s partial preference for limited contact does not compel an order, and that evidence of a parent’s sex-offense history combined with a child’s own abuse history will weigh heavily against any such order — especially when an adoptive placement hangs in the balance.
For respondent parents and their counsel, the case underscores the importance of presenting affirmative evidence at trial — testimony, expert witnesses, and a specific proposed contact framework — rather than relying on cross-examination alone. The trial court expressly noted that neither parent presented witnesses or evidence in support of their posttermination visitation motions, and that no specifics as to frequency, duration, location, or mode of contact were ever proposed, a gap that proved fatal on appeal.