COA rejects challenges to TPR dispositional order and affirms
Jefferson County DHS v. G.J.J., 2025AP2491, 3/5/26, District IV (ineligible for publication); case activity
While G.J.J. gets closer than most–and his arguments even give COA “pause”–ultimately, the deferential standard of review applicable to dispositional decisions results in affirmance.
G.J.J. challenges two aspects of the circuit court’s oral ruling in this TPR appeal.
First, he focuses on the third dispositional factor (which requires consideration of the relationship the child has with their birth family and whether it would be harmful to sever those connections) and argues that “rather than assessing the relationships between [the child] and his birth family, the circuit court undertook to compare those relationships to the relationships that [the child] had with his foster family.” (¶11). To support this argument, he relies on COA’s prior decision in Y.P.V., where the circuit court’s overemphasis on the foster family rather than focusing on the biological parent was deemed an erroneous exercise of discretion. (¶13).
Here, however, COA reads Y.P.V. narrowly:
G.J.J. is correct in observing that the third factor does not call for a comparison or weighing of a child’s relationships with their birth family against the child’s relationships with other parties. WIS. STAT. § 48.426(3)(c). Nevertheless, as Y.P.V. noted, the six statutory factors are not the only permissible considerations at a dispositional hearing. Y.P.V., Nos. 2022AP1935 and 2022AP1936, ¶30 (citing Sheboygan County v. Julie A.B., 2002 WI 95, ¶29, 255 Wis. 2d 170, 648 N.W.2d 402). Nothing in the statutes prohibits a circuit court from considering a child’s relationships with foster parents. And more generally, when a circuit court is directed to consider the relationships between a child and the child’s birth family, it is not unreasonable for that court to consider whether aspects of typical parent-child bonds are present within those relationships, or whether those aspects are present in other relationships the child may have, including with foster parents. Y.P.V. did not suggest that comparisons between birth- and foster-family relationships are forbidden in the dispositional phase; it reversed the circuit court’s disposition because the court failed to consider the relationships the children had with their birth mother or the likely harms from severing those relationships.
(¶17) (emphasis added). In this case, there was adequate evidence that the circuit court actually considered the relationship with the birth family and, viewing its statements in the aggregate, COA is unpersuaded that it applied an incorrect standard of law. (¶18).
Second, G.J.J. argues that the circuit court used the wrong standard by focusing on the existence of a “substantial parental relationship” rather than a “substantial relationship” as is statutorily-required. (¶19). As G.J.J. notes, this appears to conflate legally distinct concepts. (¶20). Although the circuit court’s explicit use of an apparently incorrect standard gives COA “pause,” COA ultimately concludes that those comments “reflect a slip of the tongue rather than the application of an improper standard of law.” (¶23). Once again, the deferential standard of review does the heavy lifting and, using a holistic examination of the overall record, COA is adequately persuaded that the circuit court used a correct standard in making its dispositional decision. (¶24).