In the Interest of G.K., Minor Child

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-1552 Filed August 19, 2026 _______________ In the Interest of G.K., Minor Child, S.K., Mother, Petitioner-Appellee, K.A., Father, Respondent-Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, The Honorable Scott J. Beattie, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Jessica A. Millage of DM Law, PLLC, Des Moines, attorney for appellant father. Sally B. Frank (until withdrawal), Jayme Wiebold, and Zachary Miller, Student Attorney, of Drake Legal Clinic, Des Moines, attorneys for appellee mother. Scott Lyon of Hope Law Firm & Associates P.C., West Des Moines, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor child. _______________ Considered without oral argument by Tabor, C.J., Sandy, J., and Mullins, S.J. Opinion by Sandy, J. 1 SANDY, Judge. A father appeals the private termination of his parental rights to a child. Following the mother’s petition to terminate his rights, the father’s parental rights were terminated due to abandonment under Iowa Code section 600A.8(3)(b) (2024), failure to provide support under subsection (4), and incarceration under subsection (9). The father contends that his incarceration cannot serve as a ground for the abandonment finding, the district court failed to establish he had the ability to provide support, and there is no evidence supporting the district court’s finding that he is unlikely to be released from incarceration in the next five years. Because the father abandoned the child, we affirm. BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS The child was born in 2015 and has lived with the mother in Polk County his entire life. The mother was fifteen years old at the time of the child’s birth and, until she turned eighteen, the maternal grandmother restricted the father’s access to the child. As the district court noted, the mother does not allege the father abandoned the child during that period of time. The father has been incarcerated since 2016 after pleading guilty to willful injury resulting in serious injury, conspiracy to commit a forcible felony, robbery in the second degree, and possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine. He was sentenced to thirty years of incarceration. Although he was eligible for parole at the time of the termination order, the father has been denied parole three times. Absent his parole being granted, the father will not be released until 2035. The father has never met the child, has never provided financial support, and has never attempted to contact the child during his incarceration. The father has contacted the mother through 2 his mother and brother with letters from prison, but none of those letters mentioned the child. The mother had the prison block her address and phone number due to her “getting messages from random females . . . saying, ‘This is going to be my son; he’s going to be in my family; I’m going to be his mom,’ multiple times.” The mother regularly saw members of the father’s family and acknowledged that the father could have sent letters for the child through them but did not do so. In December 2024, the mother petitioned to terminate the father’s rights under Iowa Code section 600A.8. Following a July 2025 contested hearing, the district court terminated the father’s rights under Iowa Code section 600A.8(3)(b), as well as subsections (4) and (9). The father now appeals. STANDARD OF REVIEW We review private termination-of-parental-rights proceedings de novo. In re B.H.A., 938 N.W.2d 227, 232 (Iowa 2020). “Although we are not bound by them, we give weight to the trial court's findings of fact, especially when considering credibility of witnesses.” Id. (citation omitted). DISCUSSION In private termination proceedings, the petitioner must prove the grounds for termination by “clear and convincing proof.” Iowa Code § 600A.8. The petitioner must then prove by clear and convincing evidence that termination is in the child’s best interests. B.H.A., 938 N.W.2d at 232. The best interests of the children are “the paramount consideration” in deciding private terminations of parental rights. Iowa Code § 600A.1(1). “However, the interests of the parents . . . shall be given due consideration in” interpreting chapter 600A. Id. When reviewing private terminations, 3 “[w]e only need to find grounds to terminate parental rights under one of the sections cited by the district court in order to affirm its ruling.” In re R.K., 649 N.W.2d 18, 19 (Iowa Ct. App. 2002) (en banc). A parent is “deemed to have abandoned the child unless the parent maintains substantial and continuous or repeated contact with the child as demonstrated by contribution toward support of the child of a reasonable amount, according to the parent’s means.” Iowa Code § 600A.8(3)(b). This can be accomplished by either visiting the child at least monthly when capable of doing so, regularly communicating with child or their caretaker when unable to visit the child, or openly living with the child for at least six months of the previous one year. Id. The father argues that because incarceration prevented him from visiting the child, he was only required to regularly communicate with the mother, and he attempted to do so. In his view, his failure to use intermediaries to communicate with the mother were courteous because he recognized his communications with her were “at best uncomfortable to her.” Notably, the father cites no case law supporting the proposition that the fear of discomfort excuses a parent’s statutory obligations for preventing abandonment under section 600A.8(3)(b). Still, even before the mother asked the prison to block her address and number, the father failed to reach out to the child and never discussed the child with the mother, either directly or in writing. The father never expressed a desire to connect with the child until his parental rights were 4 threatened by the mother’s petition. Thus, the abandonment ground for termination has been met.1 At the hearing, the father expressed a newfound desire to connect with the child due to his own father having abandoned him. He expressed disappointment with never having received “birthday wishes or letters from him on my birthdays or Christmases.” The father further explained that those experiences were painful, having asked himself, “Why did my father not want to be part of my life? You know, did he not love me?” The father “always wanted and held hope that he would come back around and be in my life.” It is striking that the father has failed in the exact ways he describes his own father’s failures. We will not allow the child to experience the same nagging questions his father experienced. Additionally, the child has mental-health needs that require consistent and reliable treatment. Following several suicide attempts, the child required inpatient care in Omaha and has been doing well since returning. The father has no personal knowledge of the child’s individualized mental-health needs and there is no guarantee as to the child’s response if his current life balance is disturbed. The child has been lovingly cared for by his mother his entire life, and she has thus far successfully navigated the child’s precarious mental- 1 Although we may affirm termination on any one ground cited by the district court, R.K., 649 N.W.2d at 19, we note that a parent’s mere eligibility for parole does not defeat the five-year ground under Iowa Code section 600A.8(9). We “cannot speculate about whether the father will be successful in his bid to be paroled early from his incarceration . . . . It is undisputed that the father’s current tentative discharge date is . . . . five or more years as contemplated by section 600A.8(9).” In re M.J.P., No. 15-1279, 2016 WL 4396108, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 17, 2016) (cleaned up). So we could affirm termination on this ground as well. 5 health circumstances. The child’s best interests are served by terminating the father’s parental rights. AFFIRMED. 6