Facts: Father and Mother are the parents of three Children who entered the custody of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (“DCS”) after Mother appeared to overdose and Father was arrested on an outstanding warrant. The Children showed signs of neglect, including injuries to the youngest Child, insufficient food, lice, missed vaccinations, and educational delays. After his release from jail, Father became homeless, relapsed into drug use, and later completed inpatient treatment. He maintained documented sobriety after completing treatment in November 2023.

At the dependency-and-neglect hearing, the juvenile court found by clear and convincing evidence that both parents committed severe child abuse. Father was present with counsel but did not appeal the March 18, 2024 order.

DCS later petitioned to terminate both parents’ parental rights based on severe child abuse and failure to manifest an ability and willingness to assume custody.

By trial, Father was employed and had made significant progress toward sobriety. But he lacked stable housing in his own name, a driver’s license, reliable transportation, and a workable plan for meeting the Children’s substantial therapeutic and educational needs. His girlfriend refused to cooperate with DCS’s background screening, so DCS could not inspect their Kentucky apartment or complete a home study. The Children’s therapists and Foster Mother also reported behavioral regression and emotional stress associated with Father’s visits.

The trial court found both grounds proven and concluded that termination was in the Children’s best interests. But its best-interest analysis included extensive findings copied from an unrelated termination proceeding. Those findings referred to different children, a different father, and a different foster family, and they included allegations of physical and emotional abuse that had no basis in this record.

On Appeal: The Court of Appeals affirmed both grounds for termination, vacated the best-interest determination, and remanded for a new, case-specific best-interest order based on the evidence already presented.

Tennessee law allows the termination of parental rights only when clear and convincing evidence establishes both a statutory ground and that termination is in the child’s best interest. The facts underlying the best-interest factors are found by a preponderance of the evidence, but the combined weight of those facts must amount to clear and convincing evidence. The analysis must be conducted from the child’s perspective and must provide individualized consideration instead of merely counting statutory factors.

Here, DCS conceded the trial court’s legal error. The Court of Appeals held that importing extensive findings from another termination case tainted the entire best-interest analysis and prevented meaningful confidence in the trial court’s weighing of the statutory factors:

[T]he facts and circumstances of each unique case dictate how weighty and relevant each statutory factor is in the context of the case. Simply put, the best interests analysis is and must remain a factually intensive undertaking, so as to ensure that every parent receives individualized consideration before fundamental parental rights are terminated.

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We agree with the parties that the trial court’s extensive findings from another termination proceeding require us to vacate and remand the best-interest determination. The termination of parental rights is one of the most severe and irrevocable actions a court can take, permanently severing the legal relationship between a parent and their child. Because of the gravity of these proceedings, a termination decision must be based upon evidence actually presented concerning the specific parents and children before the court.

In this case, the extensive findings in the Final Order from another proceeding taint the entire best-interest analysis. Although the Final Order contains substantial findings of fact that pertain to this case, we cannot determine with sufficient confidence how the trial court would have weighed the statutory factors had it not relied on the imported findings from another case involving termination of parental rights.

The Court vacated the trial court’s best-interest determination and remanded the case back to the trial court for the limited purpose of entering a new order with a new best-interest analysis based on the evidence already presented.

K.O.’s Comment: Both sides could have promptly filed a Rule 59.04 motion to correct an order that names strangers or recites misconduct that’s unsupported by the record. Waiting for appeal can prolong uncertainty for the children and parents even when the statutory grounds are otherwise supported. A prompt motion to alter or amend would have given the trial court the opportunity to correct the order before the error became the focus of an appeal.

Source: In re Samuel H. et al. (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Middle Section, August 31, 2026).

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