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In re Termination of Parental Rights to Kedar K.6/7/2005
out the process. All things that were asked of him he did complete. He completed the AODA assessment and the psychological evaluation that was requested of him.
This court concludes that Emanuel has failed to prove that he was denied his constitutional rights. His two primary complaints - that he was not given adequate notice of hearings and that Mary was unfairly offered more social services than he was - do not, under the facts of this case, rise to the level of a constitutional violation, and are inconsistent with the facts found by the trial court.
At the trial court, Emanuel asserted that he was given inadequate notice of the CHIPS and TPR proceedings. In response, the State provided the trial court with ninety-one pages of documents detailing each attempted contact with Emanuel. The State indicated that it had difficulty finding Emanuel at times (as did Emanuel's parole officer), and that it generally sent notices to Emanuel's mother's home. Emanuel acknowledged at trial that he received all mail sent to his mother's address.
On at least two occasions the trial court found that the TPR process had been implemented in a fair manner, and that there had been "nothing about these proceedings that in any way been irregular or out of the ordinary or, again, procedurally harmed the father here." At trial, the trial court explained:
ased on all these facts and the standards as enunciated in the cases I have given ... I find that there has been no violation of procedural due process at all regarding [Emanuel].
The situation is not perfect as to him. That's for sure. But there certainly has been no intentional State action to prevent him from having contact with his child Kedar. We live in an imperfect world, and when we are dealing with individuals who are not married, are transient, live with girlfriends, live with parents, go to jail, are on probation, come back into the community, go back to prison, live with another girlfriend, problems with notice and getting information to a parent are going to occur. It happens all the time.
....
hen he was incarcerated and [the State] knew that, they brought him here, they got him an attorney. He was represented. He was given the warnings in court. He knew without any question that a TPR was a possibility in this case, and the grounds were laid out in front of him. And two of those grounds that were laid out in front of him were the ones pled in this case.
So ... I find based on this that there is no procedural due process violation.
Emanuel does not challenge the trial court's factual findings on appeal, except to baldly assert that " he CHIPS orders were annually extended without notice to Emanuel G." This court concludes that the trial court's findings are not clearly erroneous. Based on those findings, this court concludes, like the trial court, that Emanuel was not denied his constitutional right to procedural due process.
Emanuel's second concern is that Mary was provided more social services than he was, such that he was denied equal protection, because of his gender. Emanuel's argument fails for several reasons. First, Emanuel fails to recognize that the alleged grounds for termination of his parental rights did not include failure to meet the conditions of a CHIPS order. The State did not need to prove it made reasonable efforts to assist Emanuel, see WIS. STAT. §§ 48.415(1)(a)3. and 48.415(6), as it would have needed to prove had it alleged that Emanuel had not met the conditions in the CHIPS order, see § 48.415(2)(a)2. In contrast, Mary's termination was based on her failure to meet conditions established in the CHIPS or
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