Rule 3.978.Post-Termination Review Hearings

MCR 3.978 covers the stretch of a case that outlasts termination. Parental rights are gone, but the child is still in foster care and still needs a permanent home, so the court keeps a schedule of hearings aimed at adoption or another permanent placement. The rule is short, and its work is done by a calendar, a notice requirement, a findings requirement, and an exit.

The hearing schedule

Subrule (A) sets two cycles. The ordinary one requires a hearing not more than 91 days after the termination of parental rights and not later than every 91 days after that hearing for the first year following termination. At each hearing the court reviews the child's placement in foster care and the progress toward adoption or other permanent placement, for as long as the child is subject to the jurisdiction, control, or supervision of the court, the Michigan Children's Institute, or another agency. The second cycle is slower and applies to a settled arrangement: where the child is in another permanent planned living arrangement, or is placed with a fit and willing relative and the placement is intended to be permanent, the hearing comes not more than 182 days from the preceding review hearing.

Who must be heard

Subrule (B) gives the people raising the child a seat. Foster parents, if any, and any preadoptive parents or relative providing care to the child must be given notice of and an opportunity to be heard at each hearing. That right runs to every hearing under the rule, not only the first.

Findings and orders

Subrule (C) fixes what the court must decide: whether reasonable efforts have been made to establish permanent placement for the child. The court may enter such orders as it considers necessary in the best interests of the child, including appointment of a juvenile guardian under MCL 712A.19c and MCR 3.979. That link matters, because a post-termination review hearing is one of the two settings in which a juvenile guardianship can be created.

Ending jurisdiction

Subrule (D) describes the two ways the court's jurisdiction in the child protective proceeding may end. The first is an order from a court of competent jurisdiction terminating the rights of the entity with legal custody and placing the child for adoption. The second is an order appointing a juvenile guardian under MCR 3.979, entered after the court has conducted a review hearing under subrule (A). Until one of those orders enters, the review cycle continues on the schedule the rule sets.