Note: This is an unpublished entry order of a three-justice panel and is not to be considered precedent before any tribunal.
Background
C.W. was born in January 2020. In May 2022, the State filed a child-in-need-of-care-or-supervision (CHINS) petition after the parents’ seven-month-old son died of a mixed drug overdose while in their custody. The Department for Children and Families (DCF) assumed custody of C.W. In December 2022, the parents stipulated to the CHINS finding, acknowledging substance-abuse disorders, relapse, and failure to provide age-appropriate supervision. The disposition order established a reunification goal and a case plan requiring the parents to demonstrate sobriety, safe and stable housing, and freedom from domestic conflict and substance use.
Parents made initial progress and the court granted them a conditional custody order (CCO) in August 2023. That arrangement collapsed in September 2024, when — while living in a hotel — father smoked crack cocaine and physically assaulted mother, dragging her to the floor, strangling her, and flinging C.W. away when the child tried to intervene. Police found blood throughout the hotel room; both mother and C.W. sustained visible injuries. An emergency care order returned C.W. to DCF custody. Father was incarcerated and, upon release in February 2025, became involved in a bar fight in Barre, resulting in a second incarceration through May 2025. Parents had earlier pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with their infant son’s death and received suspended sentences with probation; the September 2024 assault constituted a probation violation for father.
The State filed a termination petition, and the family court held a two-day hearing in September and November 2025. After making extensive findings by clear and convincing evidence — including that father refused to accept responsibility for the assault and that mother prioritized her relationship with father over C.W.’s safety — the court found a substantial change of circumstances and concluded that termination was in C.W.’s best interests. Both parents appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the termination of both parents’ residual parental rights. The court first rejected father’s procedural claim — that the State was required to file a new CHINS petition and hold a new merits hearing after the September 2024 emergency care order — because father never raised that argument before the family court during the fourteen months between the care order and the termination ruling. Applying Vermont’s preservation rule, the court declined to reach the unpreserved issue, and further declined to address father’s facial constitutional challenge to the CHINS statute, which was raised for the first time in his reply brief.
On the merits, the court rejected father’s argument that the assault findings were improperly based on hearsay. The court held those findings were supported by ample non-hearsay evidence — including mother’s own testimony acknowledging her contemporaneous statements to police and a friend that father had beaten her, the responding officer’s firsthand observations of extensive bloodstaining and injuries to both mother and C.W., and the physical disparity between the parties. As to C.W.’s reported fear of father, neither parent objected to the hearsay statements at the hearing, waiving the issue. The court also rejected father’s contention that DCF improperly cut off his contact with C.W.: father’s own criminal behavior, incarceration, and failure to renew his motion for visitation were within his control and could not be attributed to DCF. Finally, the court reaffirmed its prior holding in In re D.C., 2012 VT 108, that Santosky v. Kramer does not require an explicit standalone finding of “parental unfitness” separate from Vermont’s statutory best-interests analysis under 33 V.S.A. § 5114(a).
As to mother, the court held that substantial evidence supported the finding of stagnation despite her genuine progress in achieving sobriety, housing, and employment. Mother’s failure to acknowledge or address father’s pattern of violence, her inconsistent visitation — including repeatedly leaving visits early or missing them — and her unwillingness to separate herself from father meant she could not provide C.W. with a safe, violence-free home within a reasonable time from the child’s perspective.
Key Takeaways
- Procedural errors in CHINS proceedings must be raised before the family court to be preserved for appellate review; Vermont’s high court will not address constitutional or statutory procedural challenges raised for the first time on appeal, or raised only in a reply brief.
- Hearsay is admissible in termination proceedings and, if admitted without objection, may support factual findings; a party that fails to object at the hearing waives any appellate challenge to that evidence.
- Vermont does not require a separate explicit “parental unfitness” finding beyond the statutory best-interests analysis under 33 V.S.A. § 5114(a) to satisfy Santosky v. Kramer; fitness is assessed through the statutory criteria themselves.
- A parent’s incarceration and resulting loss of contact with a child are consequences of the parent’s own conduct and cannot be laid at DCF’s door to defeat a termination finding.
- Partial progress — stable housing, employment, sobriety — does not preclude a finding that a parent has stagnated where the core issue driving removal (here, domestic violence and dishonesty about it) remains unaddressed.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces Vermont’s demanding expectations for parents seeking to rebut a termination petition after a catastrophic relapse. The court made clear that surface-level compliance with case-plan action steps (housing, employment, sobriety) will not carry the day if a parent has failed to honestly confront and address the underlying dynamics — particularly domestic violence — that placed the child at risk. For attorneys representing parents in post-disposition termination proceedings, the decision underscores that challenges to DCF’s management of visitation must be pursued through timely motions in the family court, not reserved for appeal, and that failure to object to hearsay at the hearing is a complete waiver.
For practitioners on the State’s side, the opinion provides a clear roadmap for sustaining termination when parents are compliant on paper but remain dishonest about abuse: the court need not credit partial progress if the parent’s inability to acknowledge past violence renders reunification unsafe within a reasonable time from the child’s perspective. The panel’s reaffirmation that Vermont’s best-interests framework satisfies Santosky without a discrete unfitness finding also forecloses a recurring constitutional challenge in the state’s CHINS jurisprudence.