In the Interest of E.R., Z.R., and R.R., Minor Children

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 26-0076 Filed August 19, 2026 _______________ In the Interest of E.R., Z.R., and R.R., Minor Children, A.S., Mother, Appellant, D.R., Father, Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Benton County, The Honorable Cynthia S. Finley, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED ON BOTH APPEALS _______________ Allison C. Ackerman of Nidey Erdahl Meier & Araguas, PLC, Cedar Rapids, attorney for appellant mother. Robin L. O’Brien Licht, Cedar Rapids, attorney for appellant father. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Tamara Knight, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee State. Annette F. Martin, Cedar Rapids, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor children. _______________ 1  Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., and Badding and Sandy, JJ. Opinion by Sandy, J. 2 SANDY, Judge. A mother and father each appeal the termination of their parental rights to their three children. The parents argue that the State failed to prove the grounds for termination, termination is not in the children’s best interests, and alternatively, the juvenile court should have applied an exception to termination. We affirm. BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY The mother and father are the parents of three girls: E.R., born in 2021; Z.R., born in 2024; and R.R., born in 2025. The family first came to the attention of the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services in December 2023, when the department received a report alleging the father had hit and bitten the mother in E.R.’s presence. Both parents denied any physical violence had occurred, and the department took no formal action. In September 2024, the department opened a second family assessment after receiving a report that the father had been physically violent with the mother in E.R.’s presence. During that assessment, the child protection worker learned that Z.R.—then six months old—had no health insurance and had received little medical care since birth. Days later, the department received another report alleging Z.R. was pale, malnourished, and unable to hold her head up. On September 19, the department caseworker directed the parents to take Z.R. to the local emergency room. The examining physician found Z.R. very underweight, with muscle wasting in her arms and legs and a distended abdomen, though found no evidence of trauma. She was transferred by ambulance to a Waterloo hospital with a pediatric unit, where her primary diagnosis was malnutrition; she was also found to be developmentally delayed. Z.R. had lost roughly a pound since a July medical visit, then gained about a pound during her four-day hospital 3 admission. The parents later acknowledged to the caseworker that they had watered down Z.R.’s formula to conserve it. The department’s assessment was founded against both parents for denial of critical care—failure to provide adequate food and failure to provide proper supervision. E.R. and Z.R. were removed from parental custody on September 19 and placed with their paternal grandmother. The State filed child-in-need-of- assistance petitions the next day, and the juvenile court adjudicated both girls in need of assistance under Iowa Code section 232.96A(2) and (3)(b) (2024) on October 2nd. Following the November 5 dispositional order, custody remained with the department for relative placement. The parents were ordered to participate in SafeCare parenting instruction, obtain mental- health evaluations, and follow all subsequent treatment recommendations; Z.R. began occupational and physical therapy. DNA testing confirmed the father’s paternity in January 2025. That same month, both parents were charged with child endangerment based on Z.R.’s condition; both later pled guilty and received probationary sentences. The parents spent time in jail in February. While they were in custody, the father’s mother and the family’s service provider discovered a handgun in the parents’ apartment, in a purse next to the children’s toys. Police confiscated the weapon, and the father was charged with a firearms offense and pled guilty. In May, the parents progressed to modified semi-supervised visitation. After a June 26 domestic-violence incident, visits returned to fully supervised status and remained so through trial. Both parents completed SafeCare around the end of 2024—the provider described them as passing “with flying colors”—and both obtained mental-health evaluations. The father was diagnosed with serious mental- 4 health conditions; he also has type 1 diabetes. Neither parent engaged in mental-health therapy or medication management during the case. The parents lost their original apartment after their arrests and were living in a hotel when R.R. was born in April 2025. R.R. was removed from parental custody within two days of her birth and placed with her sisters at the grandmother’s home. She was adjudicated a child in need of assistance under Iowa Code section 232.96A(2) (2025) on April 18, with disposition on May 20; custody remained with the department. With the provider’s help, the parents then moved into a Vinton apartment complex, and the caseworker arranged extra visitation time for the mother to breastfeed and bond with R.R. Later that month, the mother fled to the paternal grandmother’s home barefoot in the middle of the night after the parents had been drinking and got into an altercation. The caseworker and services provider offered the mother weekly domestic-violence services through Waypoint; the mother declined those services. Later that month, the grandmother asked that the children be moved from her care, explaining that caring for three children had become too much and that, given the domestic violence between the parents, she could no longer support reunification. The children were placed in foster family care and, by the time of trial, all three lived together in a foster home interested in adoption. Around this same period, concerns arose about both parents’ alcohol use particularly since both were under the legal drinking age. On June 26, police responded to the parents’ apartment in the early morning hours for a domestic disturbance. Both parents had been drinking. The responding officer found the mother upset and scared, with fresh bruising and blood in the bathroom sink, and she showed him a video of the 5 altercation. The father was arrested and charged with domestic abuse assault, to which he later pled guilty. He denied responsibility, telling the provider that the mother had been the aggressor and had smeared blood on herself. The mother told the provider she loved the father, could not see life without him, and wanted to continue the relationship. A criminal no-contact order entered after the incident was dismissed at the mother’s request on September 18. Police were called to the mother’s residence again on September 29 for a domestic disturbance, but no charges were filed. The apartment complex issued the father a no-trespass warning, and he lived out of his car for a period. Although couples’ counseling was court-ordered and the providers viewed the parents as codependent, the parents never engaged in any therapy to address the conflict in their relationship. A substance-use evaluation the father completed in the fall recommended extended outpatient treatment. He did not participate, testifying that his paperwork showed no treatment was recommended. The mother reportedly completed an evaluation as well, but the department never received it. The father also had not enrolled in the domestic-abuse programming required in his criminal case. The State petitioned to terminate both parents’ rights on October 7. In the months before trial, the parents canceled or failed to confirm a series of visits, and visitation was temporarily reduced because of nonattendance. Fully supervised visits took place at a public library near the children’s placement. The father attended only one or two visits between the beginning of October and trial in December and left some visits early; he attributed his absences to work, his diabetes, and winter driving conditions. The caseworker testified that the father was standoffish during visits, showed little affection to the two younger girls, and required extensive prompting to interact with them. He told the provider he had been raised to view 6 interacting with daughters as the mother’s role. The mother’s attendance was historically more consistent, and the providers described her as engaged, attentive, and equally loving toward all three girls—at one visit managing to hold both R.R. and Z.R. while attending to E.R. But her participation declined in the period before trial, and neither parent attended a single visit in December or had seen the children since around Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, neither parent maintained stable employment. The father worked seasonal tree-service and odd jobs; the mother recently obtained her first job during the case proceedings at a restaurant. The parents relied largely on the father’s monthly aftercare subsidy and food assistance. About a month before trial the mother called the now-retired service provider to say they had no food; the provider left them a box of groceries from her own kitchen. The termination trial was held December 16, in conjunction with a review hearing in the underlying child-in-need-of-assistance cases. The court took judicial notice of the child-in-need-of-assistance case files and admitted the State’s sixty-nine exhibits without objection. The court heard testimony from a department supervisor who performed the original assessment, the ongoing caseworker, a Vinton police officer, the family’s longtime service provider, and the father. The caseworker testified that the children could not be returned to either parent at the time of trial or in the reasonable future, that reasonable efforts had been made, that additional time would not change the outcome, and that termination and adoption were in the children’s best interests. The guardian ad litem stood on her report recommending termination. The father, who was living in Iowa City with a new girlfriend whose last name he did not know, testified he had been approved for Section 8 housing with a voucher appointment set for the week after, held a valid driver’s license with transportation, and had submitted dozens of job applications. He asked the court for more time—estimating between three 7 and six months—testifying that within three months he would “definitely” have his own housing, would “hopefully” have a job, and would have food stamps. He described no firm plan with the mother: “Whatever the future holds, it holds.” The mother offered no testimony or evidence contesting termination. On December 29, the juvenile court terminated both parents’ rights to E.R. under Iowa Code section 232.116(1)(f ) and to Z.R. and R.R. under section 232.116(1)(h). The court found termination in the children’s best interests, concluded no exception under section 232.116(3) should be applied, and found continued contact between the siblings to be in their best interests. Both parents now petition for reversal of the termination order. STANDARD OF REVIEW We review termination-of-parental-rights proceedings de novo. In re L.T., 924 N.W.2d 521, 526 (Iowa 2019). “We are not bound by” the juvenile court’s factual findings, but we “give them weight, especially in assessing the credibility of witnesses.” In re M.W., 876 N.W.2d 212, 219 (Iowa 2016) (citation omitted). Our paramount concern is the children’s best interests. L.T., 924 N.W.2d at 529. The State must establish the grounds for termination by clear and convincing evidence. In re A.M., 843 N.W.2d 100, 110–11 (Iowa 2014). “Evidence is clear and convincing when there are no serious or substantial doubts as to the correctness of conclusions of law drawn from the evidence.” In re D.W., 791 N.W.2d 703, 706 (Iowa 2010) (cleaned up). We review terminations under a three-step analysis. In re A.S., 906 N.W.2d 467, 472 (Iowa 2018). We consider (1) whether a ground for termination under Iowa Code section 232.116(1) has been established, 8 (2) whether termination is in the children’s best interests, and (3) whether any permissive exception under section 232.116(3) should preclude termination. Id. at 472–73; Iowa Code § 232.116. When a parent does not challenge a particular step, we need not address it. In re J.P., No. 19-1633, 2020 WL 110425, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 9, 2020). DISCUSSION The juvenile court terminated the parents’ rights to E.R., who was four years old at the hearing, under section 232.116(1)(f ), and their rights to Z.R. and R.R., both younger than three, under section 232.116(1)(h). The parents do not dispute that the children are of the requisite ages, that each was adjudicated as a child in need of assistance, or that each had been removed for the necessary period. They contest only the final element common to both paragraphs: whether the children could be returned to their custody at the present time without exposure to the harm that would support a renewed adjudication. See Iowa Code § 232.116(1)(f )(4), (h)(4); id. § 232.102. “At the present time” means at the time of the termination hearing, not at some later point when a parent might finally be ready. A.M., 843 N.W.2d at 111; see In re Z.P., 948 N.W.2d 518, 524–25 (Iowa 2020). In gauging what a return would mean for the children, we look to the parents’ past performance, which is probative of the care they will be able to provide going forward. In re A.B., 815 N.W.2d 764, 778 (Iowa 2012). The record reflects that the children could not be safely returned when the hearing was held. The domestic violence that first brought this family to the court’s attention has persisted throughout the case, culminating in a mid-case assault charge and a later police call, and the parents had not addressed the co-dependency and alcohol use that providers tied to that violence. Neither parent was engaged in recommended mental-health 9 treatment, and the father had not begun the substance-use treatment his own evaluation recommended. Their circumstances remained precarious in the most basic respects: neither had stable employment, the mother had recently needed donated food, and neither had a home into which the children could return—the father was living with a girlfriend whose surname he could not supply. Compounding all of this, neither parent had visited the children in the month before trial, and the father’s engagement throughout had been sporadic and largely confined to the oldest child. On this record, the children could not be returned to either parent at the time of the hearing. The statutory grounds were established as to both parents. To the extent that the father presses his request for more time, it does not change that conclusion. A court may defer permanency for six months only if it can determine that the need for the children’s removal will no longer exist at the end of that period. See Iowa Code §§ 232.117(5), 232.104(2)(b). Nothing in this record would support such a determination. A parent who, at the time of trial, had no home of his own, no stable employment, and untreated domestic-violence, substance-use and mental-health concerns, and who had not seen his children in a month, offered that he would “hopefully” be working within three months. We cannot deny children permanency on that hope in expectation that a parent will one day learn to parent. See A.M., 843 N.W.2d at 112. Termination is also in the children’s best interests. Our paramount considerations are the children’s safety, the best placement for their long- term nurturing and growth, and their physical, mental, and emotional needs. Iowa Code § 232.116(2); accord In re J.H., 952 N.W.2d 157, 171 (Iowa 2020). These are young children—one an infant whose malnourishment in the parents’ care first prompted removal—who need caregivers able to make 10 their needs a consistent priority and to provide a safe, stable, and a violence- free home. Neither parent has shown they can do so. The very conditions that preclude return—unaddressed domestic violence, persistent instability, and the parents’ inability to meet even their own needs—confirm that the children’s best interests lie in the permanency that termination and adoption will allow rather than in continued waiting. See A.M., 843 N.W.2d at 112. The juvenile court also found, and the record supports, that the children’s interest in continued contact with one another can be preserved going forward. Finally, both parents invoke the closeness of the parent-child bond. Section 232.116(3)(c) permits, but does not require, a court to forgo termination when it would be detrimental to the child at the time due to the closeness of the parent-child relationship. The exception is permissive, and the parent resisting termination bears the burden of establishing it. In re A.S., 906 N.W.2d 467, 475–76 (Iowa 2018). A bond, standing alone, will not suffice; neither will a parent’s love. In re A.B., 956 N.W.2d 162, 169–70 (Iowa 2021); D.W., 791 N.W.2d at 709. The question is whether the child would be so disadvantaged by termination that the disadvantage outweighs the parent’s inability to meet the child’s developing needs. D.W., 791 N.W.2d at 709. Neither parent carried that burden. The juvenile court did not err in declining to apply the exception. Because the State proved the grounds for termination by clear and convincing evidence, termination is in the children’s best interests, and no permissive exception warrants a different result, we affirm the termination of the mother’s and the father’s parental rights. AFFIRMED ON BOTH APPEALS. 11