Terminations suck

I've been working on a termination of parental rights case for the past week. My case sucked because it was winnable at the trial level if my client hadn't left in the middle. I'm not sure what I did to deserve the termination case, but I promise to never do whatever it was again. Nothing in life is bad enough to deserve a termination case as punishment. And I got the good termination case.

The other intern (we'll call her Senior Intern) in my office has a case where a developmentally disabled couple had their children taken away for a wide variety of reasons. Exhibit 1 is a photo of the couch in the their house. A couch covered with dog shit. The same dog shit that the social worker saw the children eating. Senior Intern represents the mother. In drafting her appeal she utilized In re Fake Name. Turns out the father in In re Fake Name is the same father of the children in her case. He apparently is the developmentally disabled mack daddy of our state. He preys on developmentally disabled women and sexually harasses the social workers. He does odd jobs for a man who owns a junkyard. The junkyard owner doesn't pay him in cash. Instead he gets all the junk his front yard can handle. He has an excellent business plan though. Once he has a big enough collection of junk, people will come in off the street and offer to buy his junk.

Lessons learned from working a termination.
1. Never piss of a social worker. The best mother on earth could have her children taken away by a disgruntled social worker and psychologist.

2. There is no right answer when speaking with a psychologist.
"My children frustrate me __ None of the time. ___ Some of the time. ___ All of the time." If you select the first option you are lying. The second option shows you need to work towards the first one. The last option just means you are honest.

If you express fear that the Department is going to take your children away (perhaps because they are working to take your children away) you are paranoid. Paranoia means you may become explosive and verbally lash out at your children. This may cause your children anxiety, which may lead to development issues for them. Thus you are clearly unfit as a parent.

3. When the Department says "services" they mean "hoops," hoops for you to jump through like a circus animal. You had better not hit the side of the hoops. Only a perfect leap through the hoop shows your dedication to fixing your parental deficiencies.

4. Being a victim of domestic violence is apparently a parental deficiency. (And previous cases have shown that being raped by 10 different men means you are unable to protect your children.)

5. Judges will believe anything said by a State psychologist or social worker.

6. If one of your parental deficiencies is your failure to maintain employment, the State will schedule your visitation during work hours.

Some good news as well. My stupid pro se client realized what a dumb move he made and asked the Court to withdraw his motion.