Background
O.O. was born in 2019 to a mother with a severe, multi-decade history of addiction. Before O.O.’s birth, Mother had her parental rights terminated as to six prior children between 2010 and 2017, five of whom were born with narcotics in their systems. In a meaningful departure from that pattern, O.O. was born drug-free after Mother completed a three-month rehabilitation program during her pregnancy. DCF nonetheless held custody of O.O. for eight months after birth because Mother lived in a recovery facility that did not permit children.
On February 1, 2022, Mother overdosed on fentanyl while O.O. was at daycare, prompting DCF to petition the Wyandotte District Court to adjudicate O.O. a child in need of care (CINC) — a Kansas statutory status under K.S.A. 38-2202(d) that permits the State to assume custody when a child lacks adequate parental care. Mother stipulated to the CINC finding in June 2022. The district court then established a reintegration plan requiring Mother to maintain stable housing and employment, complete substance-abuse and mental-health assessments, submit random urinalysis tests, attend parenting education, and maintain regular contact with her court services officer.
For roughly two years Mother made substantial progress: she completed a parent management training program, maintained employment and housing, and received largely negative test results. In May 2024, however, Mother relapsed. She submitted missed, diluted, or positive tests for approximately six months, with the last confirmed positive test for methamphetamine occurring in December 2024. The State moved to terminate Mother’s parental rights in November 2024, and after a two-day hearing in April 2025 the district court entered a termination order. Mother timely appealed.
The Court’s Holding
A unanimous panel affirmed across all three issues. On the unfitness question, the court upheld the district court’s finding under K.S.A. 38-2269(b)(8) — “lack of effort on the part of the parent to adjust the parent’s circumstances, conduct or conditions to meet the needs of the child” — noting that Mother’s six-month period of missed, diluted, and positive tests, combined with her prolonged history of addiction affecting multiple children, constituted sufficient evidence. The court was candid: “This court has no doubt that Mother loves O.O. and put forth exceptional effort . . . but once again Mother relapsed.”
The panel also upheld the district court’s application of the K.S.A. 38-2271(a)(1) presumption of unfitness — triggered when a parent “has previously been found to be an unfit parent” — and applied the seven-factor framework from In re J.L., 20 Kan. App. 2d 665 (1995). Under K.S.A. 60-414(a), the burden shifted to Mother to rebut unfitness by a preponderance of the evidence. The court found she could not, given that her prior terminations all stemmed from the same addiction that continued to produce relapses. Notably, the panel partially sided with Mother, finding insufficient evidence to sustain the K.S.A. 38-2271(a)(6) presumption based on failure to carry out the reintegration plan — but that partial victory was immaterial because the other grounds independently supported the unfitness finding.
On foreseeability of continued unfitness and best interests, the court analyzed the evidence from the child’s temporal perspective — a standard anchored in In re D.G., 319 Kan. 446, 459 (2024), recognizing that “children deserve permanency within a time frame reasonable to them.” At the time of the April 2025 hearing, O.O. had spent more of his life outside Mother’s custody than with her, Mother’s last positive methamphetamine test was fewer than six months prior, and she had not yet completed the requirements to expand visitation.
Key Takeaways
- A single, identifiable pattern of relapse can satisfy K.S.A. 38-2269(b)(8) even when a parent has otherwise made substantial progress on a reintegration plan, particularly where the parent carries a lengthy history of addiction affecting multiple children.
- When applying the K.S.A. 38-2271(a)(1) presumption of prior unfitness, courts must conduct the In re J.L. seven-factor analysis to determine whether K.S.A. 60-414(a) or (b) governs — a legally significant choice because (a) places the burden of rebuttal on the parent while (b) effectively resets the burden to the State.
- Foreseeability of future unfitness is evaluated from the child’s time perspective, not the parent’s; a young child’s extended time in out-of-home placement makes even a partial recovery insufficient to defeat the foreseeability finding where the relapse pattern remains unresolved.
Why It Matters
For Kansas practitioners handling child-welfare cases, In re O.O. reinforces two doctrinal pressure points. First, the opinion provides a worked example of the In re J.L. framework in action, walking through all seven factors and reaching a clear conclusion that prior termination orders grounded in the same addiction pattern warrant the heavier K.S.A. 60-414(a) presumption — placing the parent in the position of proving fitness rather than forcing the State to disprove it. Practitioners representing parents should be prepared to present affirmative evidence of present and foreseeable future fitness, not merely evidence that progress has been made.
Second, the opinion illustrates the limits of best-efforts arguments in long-running CINC cases. The court acknowledged that Mother “has excellent parenting skills when the domestic violence, and the substance abuse, and the trauma is not interfering with her parenting” — and still affirmed termination. In cases where the child has spent a majority of their young life in out-of-home placement, the child’s need for permanency will substantially constrain the weight a court assigns to a parent’s demonstrated love, completed services, and recent sobriety.