In Re Adoption of C.A.M. (d/o/b 11/30/96), James Keith Jones and Cari Lecklitner Jones v. Michael Dale Moore

This appeal involves the termination of parental rights. When the mother and father divorced, the mother was designated as the child’s primary residential parent. In light of the mother’s allegations that he had threatened her, the father was granted only supervised visitation. After the divorce, the father lived in Texas and visited the child in Tennessee. Several years later, the father remarried and was awarded unsupervised visitation with the child. Soon thereafter, the child went to Texas for a visit with the father and his new wife. During this visit, the father and his new wife had a domestic dispute in which the father locked her and the child out of their house. After this incident, the mother refused to allow the child to visit with the father. The father was then charged with assaulting his new wife and was given probation on this charge. Soon after that, the father violated the terms of his probation by testing positive for methamphetamine. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. At the time he was sentenced, the child was seven years old. Several years later, the mother remarried. The mother and her new husband then filed this petition to terminate the father’s parental rights and to allow the mother’s new husband to adopt the child. After a hearing, the trial court terminated the father’s parental rights, finding grounds for termination and finding that termination was in the child’s best interest. The father now appeals, challenging only the trial court’s determination regarding the child’s best interest. We affirm.