NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557- 1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us 17-P-1473 Appeals Court ADOPTION OF POSY (and a companion case1). No. 17-P-1473. Bristol. September 12, 2018. - February 4, 2019. Present: Green, C.J., Milkey, & Singh, JJ. Adoption, Dispensing with parent's consent. Minor, Adoption. Parent and Child, Adoption, Dispensing with parent's consent to adoption. Practice, Civil, Adoption, Findings by judge. Petitions filed in the Bristol Division of the Probate and Family Court Department on September 18, 2014. The cases were heard by Katherine A. Field, J. Roberta Driscoll for the father. Jeremy Bayless for Department of Children and Families. Jaime L. Prince for the children. SINGH, J. From his home in Guatemala, the father sought to obtain custody of his two daughters who were placed in foster care after the death of their mother in the United States. The 1 Adoption of Beth. The children's names are pseudonyms. 2 father could not take immediate custody of the children because he had been deported earlier.2 After a one-day trial, at which the father was necessarily absent due to his immigration status, a Probate and Family Court judge issued decrees terminating the father's parental rights. In finding the father to be an unfit parent, the judge characterized him as having "abandoned" the children. She also found that he had "a serious issue with criminal activity" and "longstanding issues of domestic violence." As none of these critical findings have adequate support in the record, we vacate the decrees. Background. The mother and father were both Guatemalan nationals who met in New Bedford; they began their relationship sometime in 2004 but never married. Posy was born in August, 2006, and Beth was born in June, 2009. In April, 2009, two months before Beth's birth, the father was deported, preventing him from acknowledging paternity on Beth's birth certificate.3 After he was deported, the father maintained telephone contact with the mother (when she had access to a telephone) and the children. 2 Counsel represented that there is a ten-year restriction on the father's reentry to the United States, making him eligible for return by April, 2019. 3 Although the father has not been adjudicated Beth's legal father, there is no challenge to his paternity. 3 During the father's absence, the Department of Children and Families (department) became involved with the family. The first contact was in October, 2010, after the mother left the children in the care of a neighbor while she went to the hospital. She suffered from health conditions resulting from alcohol abuse, and her hospital stay became extended. The neighbor could not keep the children for this length of time, which led to a report to the department that the children were being neglected ...
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