I found an interesting link today in my daily research. The link is to the grounds for terminating parental rights in various states (Link ).

While the majority of the reasons listed in the statutes were reasonable at a certain level, I found two to be questionable, at best:

Been the major cause of: the failure of the child to be enrolled in school as required by law; or the child's absence from the child's home without the consent of the parents or guardian for a substantial length of time or without the intent to return;

While this may look good on the surface, it contains a pretty severe fundamental flaw. You see, in the state of Texas, homeschoolers are not required to notify ANY governing authority of the details of their homeschooling program. We are considered to be private schools. This statute potentially requires parents to provide a higher standard of proof than they are legally required to provide to homeschool within the state of Texas. It further reinforces the comments by the Homeschool Legal Defense Association and other homeschool groups that Texas social workers are, indeed, targetting families for homeschooling (in violation of their rights).

Failed to comply with the provisions of a court order that specifically established the actions necessary for the parent to obtain the return of the child who has been in the permanent or temporary managing conservatorship of the Department for not less than 9 months as a result of the child's removal from the parent for the abuse or neglect of the child;

Again, this looks like a reasonable statute. But I must remind the reader that in virtually all of these cases, the parent has not been found guilty of ANY criminal wrongdoing, and that, as far as I know, the state of Texas does NOT have a standard procedure whereby a parent can comply with the court's order without a de facto admission of guilt. Because of this, this requirement can lead to a violation of the individual's fifth amendment rights. Most parents will, of course, comply, because they want their children returned. But the fact that these parents WILL comply does not change the fact that the government is violating their rights by requiring them to do so without first being found guilty of abuse or neglect in a criminal proceeding.

Most of the other reasons for termination of parental rights seemed reasonable, in the state of Texas, at least. But they are reasonable if and ONLY if the parents have been found guilty of said actions in a criminal court and not simply accused of such in a civil proceeding.