Carolyn Marie Leasure White, et al. v. Timothy Wade Moody

This is the third appeal of a case involving a divorced father’s parental rights to his eleven-year-old daughter. The father maintained only sporadic contact with his daughter following his divorce from the child’s mother. After the child’s mother remarried, she and her new husband filed a petition in the Chancery Court for Robertson County seeking to terminate the father’s parental rights and to permit the mother’s new husband to adopt the child. We reversed the first order terminating the father’s parental rights because the trial court had failed to conduct the statutorily required best interests analysis. On remand, the trial court determined that terminating the father’s parental rights was in the child’s best interests without conducting an evidentiary hearing. We reversed the second termination order and remanded the case to enable the parties to present evidence. Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court entered a third order terminating the father’s parental rights and granting the stepfather’s petition to adopt the child. The father has appealed the trial court’s conclusion that terminating his parental rights is in his daughter’s best interests. We have determined that the record contains clear and convincing evidence to support the trial court’s decision.