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In the Interest of K. E. A.

Evidence that the putative father has no relationship with the child, he failed to legitimate the child and the child has been in DFACS' custody since October 2004, supported the termination of his parental rights.

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A juvenile court terminated the putative father’s parental rights to K. E. A. On appeal, the putative father challenges the juvenile court’s termination of his rights and contends that the court erred in failing to ascertain whether he was entitled to appointed counsel. The Department of Family and Children Services DFCS, however, asserts that because the putative father never legitimated the child, he lacks standing to challenge the juvenile court’s ruling. For reasons that follow, we disagree with DFCS regarding the putative father’s standing to pursue this challenge. We nonetheless affirm the trial court’s ruling. We review an order terminating parental rights in a light favorable to the juvenile court’s ruling to determine whether the finder of fact could have found by clear and convincing evidence that the parent’s rights to custody should be terminated.1 “In so doing, we do not weigh the evidence or determine the credibility of witnesses; rather, we defer to the juvenile court’s factfinding and affirm unless the appellate standard is not met.”2

Viewed in this manner, the record shows that six-year-old K. E. A. was living with his biological mother and a step-father in October 2004 when he was taken into DFCS’s custody based upon the fact that the family had moved four times in two months and the stepfather was using drugs.3 K. E. A. has remained in foster care, as his mother and step-father have been unable or unwilling to comply with their case plan, which required, among other things, that the two obtain stable employment and abstain from drug use.

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