The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated an alimony amount and retirement-age cutoff because the judge omitted marital station and lacked findings supporting future termination.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed termination of a mother’s parental rights to two young children over a dissent arguing the record showed significant progress across all areas of concern. The majority held the trial judge properly weighed the mother’s recent improvements against a continuing pattern of evasion and recurring behavior, and that the mother’s own testimony that she still needed six more months of preparation after five years of DCF services supported a finding of non-temporary unfitness. Judge Wood’s dissent contends the majority applied too demanding a standard under Adoption of Arianne.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court vacated four years of guardianship proceedings and remanded for dismissal, holding that the Probate and Family Court never had subject matter jurisdiction over a newborn’s custody under the Massachusetts Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (MCCJA) because New Hampshire—not Massachusetts—was the child’s home state, and the concurrent New Hampshire proceeding independently barred the Massachusetts action under G. L. c. 209B, § 2(d).
The Massachusetts Appeals Court held that the Juvenile Court has jurisdiction under G.L. c. 210, § 1, to hear a birth mother’s motion to revoke her adoption consent and to approve an open adoption agreement, even though the consent was executed before the subject child was added to a pending care and protection petition, because the 1993 statutory amendments require only that a care and protection proceeding be pending when the motion is filed—not that it was pending when the consent was executed.