Termination of parental rights in Mississippi (TPR) had a curveball thrown yesterday. The Mississippi Court of Appeal decided Farthing v. McGee located here. A number of commenters, myself included, felt that termination of parental rights could only be considered in the context of a pending adoption petition based on several recent court cases. The Court of Appeals yesterday dated stated that was not a prerequisite to a termination of parental rights and that a separate cause of action does exist for it. I expect this case to go up on cert if one is filed.
The same case also had some useful language about guardian ad litems having to be able to personally verify everything in their report. This may be some helpful language where many guardian ad litem unfortunately rely on third parties to do investigations.
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