Massachusetts Appeals Court weighs whether trial judge properly terminated father’s parental rights

The Massachusetts Appeals Court heard oral argument in Department of Children and Families v. Father, case no. 25913, over whether the trial court properly terminated the father’s parental rights.

Roberta Driscoll Weiss, counsel for the appellant father, said the judge erred by giving disproportionate weight to distant events rather than the father’s more recent treatment and progress. “Father need not be an ideal parent to be a fit parent,” Weiss told the panel, arguing that unfitness must be proven by clear and convincing evidence and that findings should focus on present and future risk, not remote conduct.

Weiss acknowledged prior wrongdoing, including falsified urine screens in 2020–21 and a July 2021 episode of active substance use, but urged the court to consider the father’s subsequent engagement in treatment at Spectrum and largely negative screens from November 2022 to April 2024. She argued relapse in recovery is not uncommon and said clinician testimony indicated the father could make adaptive gains. “His clinician testified that father is triggered when people get into an argument or question him repeatedly without giving him a chance to explain,” Weiss said, asking the court not to treat stressed courtroom demeanor as dispositive of long-term parental fitness.

The panel repeatedly pressed Weiss about more recent positive tests and whether the father had a satisfactory, individualized relapse-prevention plan. Weiss said the father had provided a plan but disputed the claim that clinicians at Spectrum failed to individualize relapse prevention; she also noted the father holds a medical marijuana card and that an April 2024 test showed Suboxone.

Claire Gilchrist, for the Department of Children and Families, urged affirmance of the termination orders. Gilchrist said the trial judge relied on a broad record of both historic and recent behavior across settings: combative conduct at a treatment clinic and visitation center, missed counseling sessions, a relapse roughly two and a half months before the end of trial, and continued efforts by the father to withhold records. “Father was not only combative throughout the trial, he was combative at his substance use treatment clinic at Spectrum,” Gilchrist said, and she pointed to an open assault charge in January 2024 and multiple instances where the father falsified drug screens.

Gilchrist told the court that cannabinoid-positive tests were significant despite a medical marijuana card because the department had developed a marijuana safety plan with the father to limit impairment while caring for a child; she said questions about candor and returning to substance use undermined confidence in compliance with such safeguards.

Alan Campbell, the child’s attorney, asked the court to affirm the judgment so the child may be adopted by her maternal aunt, with whom the child has lived since Oct. 7, 2022. Campbell described the child as about five and a half years old and said the trial court properly weighed demeanor and credibility in its factfinding. “The court looked at everything, carefully weighed, talks about the good, talks about the bad, and found, on balance, that there was clear and convincing evidence that father was unfit,” Campbell told the panel.

After questions from the panel, the court submitted the case. The judges did not issue a decision at argument; the matter is under advisement.

Notes: The oral argument focused on legal standards for termination, the weight to give past conduct versus recent treatment, the evidentiary significance of positive drug tests (including cannabinoids), the father’s history of falsified screens, missed treatment sessions and a recent relapse, and the child’s current pre-adoptive placement with a relative.