The ‘civil death penalty’ of family courts leaves parents and families with little reprieve and lifelong consequences.
The Minneapolis mothers who gather every week on Hennepin Avenue are in mourning. They aren’t grieving the dead. Accused in the family law courts of maltreatment, they’ve lost the right to see or even speak to their children.
With little knowledge or access to recourse in the higher courts, moms in similar circumstances across the country most often have only solitude to sit with — no condolences, funerals or casseroles — just the shame and internalized stigma of being deemed unfit to parent.
But every Tuesday, this rare group of about 10 women gathers over coffee and snacks to discuss living in the aftermath of the life-altering court decision known as the “civil death penalty.”
“I felt a relief to be around other people that experienced the same thing as me,” said Nicole Peter, 41, who lost her parental rights two years ago. “We all have different stories, but we all miss our children.”
In 2020, the parents of almost 900 children in Minnesota had their rights terminated, according to state data — civil court rulings that disproportionately impact families of color, particularly Indigenous and Black families.
Under federal law, child welfare agencies must request the termination of parental rights whenever an older child has lived in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. In Minnesota, that process can move even faster if parents have not complied with a court-ordered case plan designed to mitigate the conditions that brought the child into foster care. The plans typically include services such as drug treatment, domestic violence prevention courses, counseling and regular supervised visits with children. When Minnesota parents are found out of compliance, child welfare agencies can request termination of their custody rights in 12 months, and in just six months for children 7 and younger.
The odds are not in the favor of these low-income parents, who often struggle with poverty, addiction, homelessness, untreated mental illness and domestic violence. Minnesota has long been among the few states offering only scant legal representation for low-income defendants in the child protection courts, as they face off with the heavily-lawyered teams representing the county child welfare agencies that have removed their children from home and set the terms for reunification.
In January, a law granting parents the right to legal counsel “at all stages of the proceedings” went into effect in Minnesota. Prior to that, Minnesota judges weighing child abuse and neglect cases chose to appoint attorneys for low-income parents when the court deemed it “appropriate.”
A bill this session seeks to follow through on that promise by ensuring that parents can effectively exercise their right to appeal — a critical avenue for parents facing rulings known as “TPR,” or the termination of parental rights. Despite the high stakes of these child protection cases, in Minnesota, there is no consistent statewide process for appointing attorneys to appeal final orders of the district courts.
“We want to make sure that parents are fully supported and have the legal counsel that they need to make their case before the courts.”
— Minnesota state Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn
The legislation would establish a centralized office to make qualified appellate attorneys accessible under short court deadlines. In Minnesota, child protection appeals must be filed within 20 days of a court order.
The Office of Appellate Counsel for Parents is envisioned as an independent, statewide office governed by a seven-member board. The office would facilitate contracts with appellate parent attorneys, coordinate and assign appeals to a roster of approved attorneys and provide them with training and resources to best represent their clients.
Families are “unable to effectively advocate for their right to remain together when they believe that the district court has erred,” according to a summary of the legislation published by the Institute to Transform Child Protection at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. “An effective appellate system helps safeguard these important interests.”
The institute also notes that children and parents “suffer when incorrect or improper district court decisions that profoundly affect them are not effectively appealed.” This is of particular concern in a state where American Indian, Black, Latino, and mixed-race children “are statistically more likely to enter out-of-home care and have their parents’ rights terminated and are less likely than their white peers to be adopted.” In that context: “the lack of access to an appeal or effective appellate counsel creates grave disparities for families in the system.”
Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn (DFL) is the chief House author of the bill, which stalled in the Legislature last year but is now moving through committees again.
“Facing the loss of your parental rights is a really big deal and we want to make sure that parents are fully supported and have the legal counsel that they need to make their case before the courts,” Becker-Finn said at a hearing last month.
The need to heal
The issues being grappled with in the support group for mothers who’ve lost their parental rights, known as Stronger Together, reveal how vital it is to make sure the courts don’t make mistakes when they terminate parental rights. The sessions are led by licensed professionals and organized by Bellis, a Minneapolis nonprofit serving people impacted by adoption and foster care.
A survey Bellis commissioned in 2019 found that no other organization in the country offered grief support to mothers who have had their parental rights terminated.
Since the launch of the program two years ago, more than 100 women have participated. The need to heal is quickly evident. The number of weekly groups has grown from one meeting a week to four — including sessions now being run at a women’s prison in Shakopee.
Kelly Tronstad has been facilitating the support groups for almost two years. She begins the sessions with a series of stretches before checking in with the participants. The conversations often address feelings of shame, guilt and emptiness.
“What we really try to do for these women is to hold a compassionate, loving, nonjudgmental space to help them recognize that they are so much more than the actions and mistakes that they have made in the past and that they do have a life beyond their termination of parental rights,” Tronstad said.
Based on the data Bellis has collected, the method for these often-forgotten parents has worked. A survey found that all mothers felt supported by the group, 97% felt less alone, 87% felt less shame and 77% had an increased sense of calm.
One survey respondent wrote, “It helped me in my journey to face the pain I had been holding inside. I have met other women who know exactly how I feel. I am able to talk freely about my story without judgment and with total acceptance. This has changed my life.”
Tronstad said she has seen the women grow together.
“Every single woman has been like, ‘I am just so glad that a place like this exists because otherwise I never would have had the opportunity to just talk about it,’” Tronstad said. “We all know that shame lives in silence.”
“Once you know there’s other women that are going through the same thing as you, there’s something really strong about that — getting together with broken hearts where we can understand each other.”
— Nicole Peter, Stronger Together participant
Children are impacted by these legal separations as well. While many may have been gravely harmed at home, there can be new traumas that come from being separated from family and kin.
In a 2008 study, researchers at the University of Chicago interviewed young adults who had remained in foster care without being taken into new families through guardianship or adoption. Emotional support was “frequently noted as being both needed and missing by youth and young adults in foster care,” the researchers found. They described “ambiguous loss” as being a constant in their lives, as they “learned to cope with people coming in and out of their lives.” They hoped for some semblance of permanence within a family, but reported “not being confident of the certainty of this or perceiving it as something under their control.”
Life-altering decisions
Support group participant Peter said her kids wanted nothing to do with her, and she has not seen them in seven years. At their request, she gave up her parental rights, permanently severing the legal bond between them.
She had been struggling with a drug addiction when her children were separated from her and placed into foster care, she explained. Peter said she had plans to send them to Florida to live with her daughter’s father, and then move to Florida herself and get substance abuse treatment.
But those plans got upended when she was charged with selling drugs and wound up serving six months in jail.
Peter has been going to Stronger Together since its inception in 2021, and calls it a “lifesaver.”
“Once you know there’s other women that are going through the same thing as you there’s something really strong about that — getting together with broken hearts where we can understand each other,” Peter said. “It’s a lot of women that are grieving motherhood, there’s just a lot of grief involved, and it’s always there.”
Accessible legal services are long overdue for these vulnerable populations, advocates told lawmakers.
“A court’s decision to terminate a mother’s parental rights is life-altering,” Bellis Executive Director Jenny Eldredge wrote in a recent op-ed for MinnPost. “For these women, time stops. Overwhelming grief, without closure or ritual, paralyzes coping strategies.”
Because these parents are often ill-informed about their legal status and their right to appeal, she urged the Minnesota Legislature to pass Becker-Finn’s bill to make appellate counsel more accessible to parents, like the mothers in her organization’s support group.
In her experience leading dozens of support groups, facilitator Tronstad noted: “Every single one of these women has expressed some confusion about their legal status and their options moving ahead.”
Bellis has received funding from the Sauer Family Foundation, which is also one of the financial contributors to Fostering Media Connections, The Imprint’s parent nonprofit company. Per our editorial independence policy, the foundation has no editorial role in our news coverage.
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