L.O., Mother, Appellant. v. << (2026)

A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights to her two daughters. The mother argues the district court should have granted her six additional months to work toward reunification and challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the statutory grounds for termination. We affirm.

BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

This family has been through the juvenile court once before. A child-in-need-of-assistance case was initiated in 2023, driven mainly by the mother's substance use, and closed the next year after the father was granted custody. The children were living with their mother again when the current case began.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services removed K.B., born in 2019, and Z.O., born in 2020, from the home in January 2025, citing safety concerns. Temporary removal orders placed K.B. with a relative and Z.O. with an aunt, each under department supervision. The juvenile court adjudicated both children in need of assistance in February. The dispositional order entered continued the relative placements and directed visitation at the department's discretion, as well as family-centered services, a substance-use evaluation with follow-through on its recommendations, drug testing on request, and a mental-health evaluation and treatment for each parent.

Neither relative placement lasted. A July review order transferred custody of both girls to the department for placement in family foster care, and a second review order continued that arrangement. The girls were eventually placed together in a foster home in Bondurant, about one hundred miles from the mother's home in Mason City. They have not been returned to a parent at any point since removal, and there has been no trial period at home.

The State petitioned to terminate on December 4, alleging grounds under Iowa Code section 232.116(1)(a), (e), and (f ) (2025). The court held the termination hearing on April 9, 2026. The mother appeared with counsel and contested termination. The father did not appear.

The mother's drug use has been the central concern from the start. She entered inpatient treatment at Prairie Ridge three times and left early twice. On the third attempt she completed the twenty-eight-day program. After discharge she moved into a sober living house, began intensive outpatient treatment three times a week, and continued in family treatment court, a voluntary program. She had also been seeing a therapist for a little over three years.

What happened in the weeks just before the hearing was disputed. The department's case worker testified that she learned the day before the hearing that Prairie Ridge reported that the mother had been discharged from the sober living house after a positive methamphetamine screen, missed curfews, and been staying up all night, and that she had missed a urinalysis and services there that week. The mother gave a different account. She testified that the sober living house administered an in-home test that came back positive for amphetamines, she takes Wellbutrin, and a test at Prairie Ridge the same day was negative. At the time of the hearing, she had been living with her uncle in Mason City for about two weeks. She was unemployed, had last worked in 2023, and had no valid driver's license. The case worker also testified the mother had missed drug tests on March 18, March 25, April 1, April 3, and April 6, and had gone long stretches without calling the daily testing line at all.

The mother's contact with the girls falls into three periods. She attended eighteen interactions between February and July 2025. She attended none between July and early September. Since September she attended fifteen and canceled or failed to appear for seventeen. She never progressed beyond fully supervised visits.

The mother attributed the missed visits to distance. The director of services for the family-centered services provider testified about what was offered to bridge it: bus passes, two nights in a hotel, an Uber between the bus station and the hotel, and gas cards for any friend or relative willing to drive. The mother used that arrangement a few times. On at least one occasion the hotel room was reserved and paid for but she did not show up, and the agency was not refunded. The director testified the mother refused visits outright through July and the first part of September 2025, telling her the whole process was too much and a waste of money and that she wanted the girls brought to Mason City. The director drove to Mason City during that stretch and spent an hour with the mother at the maternal grandmother's home trying to reengage her.

The director also explained why the children were not transported to the mother's location. Based on her staff's reports, the foster parents’ reports, and her own observations of the girls, she concluded they could not be safely transported by a single worker for what would amount to a full eight-hour day. She acknowledged that hotel rooms are not an ordinary expense for her agency and probably cost more than the State reimburses for a month of services, but she said it was the best available way for the mother to see her daughters.

The department pursued other options as well. The case worker testified that a department worker drove the mother to Bondurant several times and that she asked about the maternal grandmother driving, since the grandmother has a license and a car, and offered gas cards. The grandmother never did so; the case worker was told she does not like to travel. When the mother suggested other relatives who might help, the case worker asked for their contact information, and the mother declined to give it. The family support specialist assigned since late December testified she had driven the mother to Bondurant herself.

Both providers testified that transportation was not the only reason visits did not happen. The case worker testified the mother refused several visits outright—saying she would not travel, providers should not contact her unless the children were present, it was her right to decline to travel, and visits were not in anyone's best interests. On March 9, the mother did not attend a visit after providers told her the tie-dye activity she had proposed was not suited to the library location. She acknowledged this at the hearing, testifying she got upset and chose to go to Prairie Ridge rather than attend the visit in a bad mood. The family support specialist testified she spent that day driving between Prairie Ridge and the grandmother's home looking for the mother and heard nothing until the next day. On March 16, the mother texted that she had her own rides arranged going forward. The visit set for March 30 did not occur.

The girls did well in the foster home but had some difficulties. The case worker described swearing, physical fighting between the two of them, jumping off furniture, throwing rocks, breaking things in the home, and removing their seat belts in the car. They were receiving assistance through their therapist and their school. The case worker testified she had been able to observe only one visit between the mother and the girls because of the visits the mother missed, but she explained that the one visit she witnessed went well. She testified the girls know their mother and are bonded to her but that the mother could not progress to semi-supervised contact given her long history of use and the short duration of her sobriety. The worker opined that permanency through termination and adoption was in their best interests.

The mother asked the court for six more months. She testified she was taking her sobriety seriously, was considering moving to Des Moines to be nearer to the girls, and believed she could have the children returned within six months. On cross-examination by the guardian ad litem, she acknowledged a recent deferred judgment and two years’ probation for violating a custodial order and a pending harassment charge.

On April 27, the court entered separate but substantively identical orders in the two cases. It terminated the mother's parental rights under section 232.116(1)(e) and (f ) and terminated the father's rights as well as those of all putative fathers on the same grounds. The court found the department had made reasonable efforts toward reunification, termination served the children's best interests under section 232.116(2), and none of the permissive exceptions in section 232.116(3) applied. The orders did not expressly address the mother's request for a six-month extension.

The mother argues the court should have granted her six additional months to work toward reunification and challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting both statutory grounds. The State responds that the mother waived her first two claims by failing to support them with authority, contests error preservation, and defends the evidence supporting termination under paragraph (e).

STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review termination-of-parental-rights proceedings de novo. In re D.W., 791 N.W.2d 703, 706 (Iowa 2010). We are not bound by the juvenile court's findings of fact, but we give them weight, especially in assessing the credibility of witnesses. In re A.B., 815 N.W.2d 764, 773 (Iowa 2012). A ground for termination must be established by clear and convincing evidence—evidence that leaves no “serious or substantial doubts as to the correctness or conclusions of law drawn from the evidence.” D.W., 791 N.W.2d at 706 (citation omitted).

We follow a three-step analysis: whether a ground for termination under section 232.116(1) has been established; if so, whether termination is in the children's best interests under section 232.116(2); and if so, whether any permissive exception under section 232.116(3) should preclude termination. Id. When the juvenile court terminates on more than one statutory ground, we may affirm on any ground supported by the record. A.B., 815 N.W.2d at 774.

DISCUSSION

Although the State contests error preservation, we assume without deciding that the mother preserved error on her claims and briefed them adequately, and we resolve them on the merits.

Statutory grounds. The juvenile court terminated the mother's parental rights under section 232.116(1)(e) and (f ). Because we may affirm on any single supported ground, we address paragraph (e) and need not reach the mother's challenge to paragraph (f ) or her related contention that the State failed to prove a nexus between her substance use and the adjudicatory harm. See A.B., 815 N.W.2d at 774.

Paragraph (e) requires proof that the child has been adjudicated in need of assistance, the child has been removed from the parent's physical custody for at least six consecutive months, and there is clear and convincing evidence the parent has not maintained significant and meaningful contact with the child during the previous six consecutive months and has made no reasonable efforts to resume care despite the opportunity to do so. In re T.S., 868 N.W.2d 425, 436–37 (Iowa Ct. App. 2015). The first two elements are not seriously in dispute: the children were adjudicated in need of assistance on February 25, 2025, and have been removed from the mother's custody since January 3, 2025, with no trial period at home.

The mother's argument reduces to the third element. “Significant and meaningful contact” is a term of art. It is not maintained simply by visiting a child; it requires the affirmative assumption of parental duties, including a genuine effort to complete the responsibilities prescribed in the case permanency plan. See id. Participating in some visits and services is not enough, and maintaining the status quo will not defeat termination. Id.

The record shows the mother never progressed beyond fully supervised visits, missed or canceled a large share of the visits offered, and for a stretch of months refused visits outright. Her substance use—the concern that drove this case—remained unresolved at the time of the hearing, marked by a disputed positive methamphetamine screening and repeated missed drug tests in the weeks before trial. Because the two requirements of subparagraph (e)(3) are conjunctive and call for a qualitative look at the parent's conduct as a whole, this record establishes both the absence of significant and meaningful contact and the absence of reasonable efforts on the mother's part to resume care.

The mother attributes her missed contact to the roughly one-hundred-mile distance to the children's foster placement. But providers offered bus passes, paid hotel nights, rideshare, and gas cards, and department staff repeatedly drove her to the children. The mother used those arrangements only sporadically, declined to identify alternative relative drivers, and at times, asserted a right to decline to travel altogether. Distance does not excuse the failure the statute measures.

Additional six months. The mother asked for six more months to work toward reunification. A court may continue a child's placement for an additional six months only if it can determine, and enumerate the specific factors, conditions, or expected behavioral changes supporting the determination, that the need for the child's removal will no longer exist at the end of that period. See Iowa Code §§ 232.117(5), 232.104; In re A.A.G., 708 N.W.2d 85, 92–93 (Iowa Ct. App. 2005). We cannot make that determination here. The mother's sobriety was recent and unverified—contradicted by a positive screen and missed tests—and she never advanced beyond fully supervised visits. Recent, eleventh-hour progress set against a longer history of addiction and litany of missed visits does not warrant more time because we have no reason to believe the need for removal will be alleviated. See Iowa Code § 232.104(2)(b); In re C.B., 611 N.W.2d 494, 495 (Iowa 2000).

Best interests and Permissive Exceptions. Termination is in the children's best interests, and no permissive exception applies. Section 232.116(2) directs primary consideration to the children's safety, to the best placement for furthering their long-term nurturing and growth, and to their physical, mental, and emotional needs. The children have been out of the home since January 2025, and they cannot be required to wait indefinitely for their mother to become able to parent them. See C.B., 611 N.W.2d at 495. Although the children are bonded to their mother, that bond does not overcome their need for permanency. The juvenile court found that no permissive exception under section 232.116(3) applies, and we agree.

AFFIRMED.

Opinion by Sandy, J.