Sellers v. Sellers

Misty Sellers, the biological mother of J. S., appeals from the trial court’s order terminating her parental rights and granting Brandi Sellers’s, J. S.’s stepmother’s, petition of adoption. For reasons that follow, we affirm. “On appeal from an order severing a parent’s rights to a child based on an adoption petition, this Court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial court’s findings and determines whether any rational trier of fact could have found by clear and convincing evidence that the biological parent’s rights to custody have been lost.” Meeks v. Thompson , __Ga. App.__Case No. A05A1739, decided Jan. 24, 2006.

So viewed, the evidence below was that the mother and father of J. S. were divorced when the child was approximately a year and a half old. In January 1999, when the boy was three and a half, the father became the primary physical custodian. The mother was ordered to pay $25 per week in child support. The mother testified that she paid from January to October 1999, and then stopped paying for two years. She claimed to have sent three checks to the father and stepmother during the last year, but said those were returned to her. The mother stated that she began receiving social security disability checks earlier that year. She said she also received a lump sum payment of $11,000 or $12,000 for back payments that accrued while her case was pending. The mother admitted that she did not use any of that lump sum payment for support for any of her children.1 Nor did she ever send any of her monthly checks to pay for support for any of the children.