In Re Kaliyah S.

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court held that the State need not prove it made reasonable efforts to reunify parent and child as a precondition to terminating parental rights: under Tenn. Code Ann. § 36-1-113, the extent of DCS's reunification efforts is merely one factor in the best-interest analysis, provable by a preponderance of the evidence rather than clear and convincing evidence. Reading § 36-1-113 in pari materia with § 37-1-166, the court concluded the reasonable-efforts duty belongs to juvenile-court dependency-and-neglect proceedings and was deliberately omitted from the termination statute, and it overruled In re C.M.M. and In re Tiffany B. to the extent they imposed a clear-and-convincing reasonable-efforts prerequisite. Exercising discretion under Tenn. R. App. P. 13(b) and 36(a), the court reached the State's first-time argument because it implicated a fundamental liberty interest and a matter of great public importance. With Father's best-interest challenge deemed waived, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the juvenile court's termination of Father's rights to Kaliyah S.