Background
The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the termination of Kimberly A. Esco’s parental rights to her ten-year-old twins. The unpublished opinion applies the statutory ground for a child who has spent fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months in foster care. Under South Carolina precedent, satisfying the numerical threshold is not enough by itself: the delay in reunification must be attributable to the parent’s inability to provide a safe and nourishing environment, rather than government mistakes or the conduct of outsiders.
The children entered foster care in March 2023 due to the home’s physical condition and concerns about domestic violence and substance abuse in their presence. By the July 2025 termination hearing, they had remained in care for approximately twenty-seven months. Esco’s placement plan required stable housing and employment, domestic-violence and substance-use treatment, and random drug screens within seventy-two hours of a DSS request. She completed domestic-violence classes and was still enrolled in substance-abuse counseling, but remained unemployed for much of the case. The DSS caseworker and guardian ad litem also continued to have serious concerns about the home.
Esco admitted using illegal substances while the case was pending but said she had been drug-free for more than a year by the hearing. She and the children’s father nevertheless missed multiple drug screens. Esco blamed transportation problems, while the caseworker testified that she offered transportation and received no response. Esco appealed the termination order, challenging both the statutory basis and the family court’s assessment of the children’s best interests.
The Court’s Holding
Reviewing factual and legal issues de novo, the court held that clear and convincing evidence supported termination. Although appellate judges may make their own factual findings, they still recognize the family judge’s superior opportunity to assess credibility, and the appellant retains the burden to show the finding was wrong. The twins’ twenty-seven months in care readily met the statutory period. The court then found that Esco’s own inability to provide a safe, stable home—not agency error—caused the continued separation.
Her completion of domestic-violence classes and continuing counseling did not resolve the broader record. The court relied on prolonged unemployment, continuing home concerns, admitted drug use during the case, missed screens, and the unaccepted transportation offer. Those facts supplied the causal link South Carolina law requires before foster-care duration can support termination. The panel contrasted cases where governmental delays and roadblocks, rather than parental acts or omissions, made timely reunification impossible.
The court separately found termination served the children’s best interests. Both twins had post-traumatic stress disorder and received counseling for behavioral issues. One child stopped visiting the parents after October 2024 because visits produced severe reactions; her therapist concluded visitation was not in her best interest and observed that her behavior improved once visits ended. The guardian ad litem reported that the child sometimes urinated or vomited from visit-related stress. The twins lived in separate foster homes because of their behavioral needs, but each foster parent wished to adopt. One child was open to adoption and the other had consistently requested it since November 2023.
Those facts supported permanency through adoption when viewed from the children’s perspective, which is the paramount concern in a South Carolina termination case. The court also found unpreserved Esco’s claims that the family court’s order lacked adequate findings and that it needed a separate finding of parental unfitness. She had not raised those asserted defects in family court through a motion directed at the order.
Key Takeaways
- Partial completion of a placement plan does not bar termination when unresolved safety, employment, substance-use, and testing concerns still prevent reunification.
- The 15-of-22-month ground requires proof that parental inability—not merely the passage of time—caused the child to remain in foster care.
- South Carolina’s best-interest analysis gives substantial weight to therapeutic evidence, the child’s response to visitation, permanency needs, and concrete adoption prospects.
- Challenges to missing findings or the absence of an express parental-unfitness finding must be preserved in family court before appellate review.
Why It Matters
The decision is a practical warning against treating placement-plan compliance as a checklist. South Carolina practitioners should connect each completed or incomplete service to the actual barrier to reunification. Evidence that a parent attended classes may be meaningful, but it will not necessarily answer continuing concerns about sobriety, home conditions, employment stability, or responsiveness to testing requests.
The preservation ruling is equally important. If an order omits findings that a party believes South Carolina law requires, counsel should ask the family court to correct or expand the order. On the evidentiary side, DSS, guardians ad litem, and parents’ counsel should create a detailed record of transportation assistance, missed tests, treatment progress, visitation effects, and each child’s placement. That record permits the appellate court to distinguish parental inability from agency-caused delay and to evaluate best interests child by child.