Legal Question in Family Law in Hawaii

Hi, Pursuant to HRS �571-61 entitled "Termination of parental rights; petition": You may petition the family court of the circuit in which you reside, or in the circuit in which the child resides, or was born, for the entry of a judgment of termination of parental rights. One of the recognized grounds for involuntarily terminating parental rights is described in subsection (B)(1)(c) as follows:

The family courts may terminate the parental rights in respect to any child as to any legal parent: . . .(C) Who, when the child is in the custody of another, has failed to communicate with the child when able to do so for a period of at least one year.

Therefore, the key factor would be whether or not the biological father has failed to communicate with your daughter for more than a one year period when he was able to do so. In this regard, communication can be in any form, telephone, email, computer, in person, etc. So, if the biological father has failed to communicate with your daughter for over a one year period when he had an ability to do so, it would appear you have a good faith case to seek termination of his parental rights. However, you need to bear in mind that the biological father could still try to defend the case on the basis that that he was not able to communicate for one reason or another. Instead of starting by immediately filing a termination action (which usually gets people very defensive and upset) I've had some success in the past with sending the biological father a nice, but firm letter advising him of the applicable law and offering to resolve everything on a friendly basis if he will simply sign a pleading voluntarily terminating his parental rights. Of course, if the bio. father agrees to sign such a pleading it will mean that he will no longer have any child support obligations. Although I obviously cannot guarantee this will work in your case, it has proved successful in several past cases with similar facts. The obvious incentive for the biological father to voluntarily sign such a termination pleading is it will save him the time of trouble of defending a termination action and more importantly, it will relieve him of any further support obligation.

Hopefully, this fully answers your question. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions or would like to proceed as outlined above.

David E. Smith

Attorney At Law

808-322-4766