Termination of parental rights is a very serious matter. If your parental rights to your child are terminated, you will no longer have the legal right to visit with the child, speak to him or her on the telephone, communicate with the child by mail, or be told where the child is or what is happening to him or her. Your family’s legal right to its relationship with your child will also be permanently and completely ended. You and your family will only be able to have contact with your child if the adoptive parents give you permission.

If your child is adopted after your parental rights are terminated, you will no longer be financially responsible for the child. However, before the child is adopted, DYFS, your county welfare agency, or friends or relatives who have custody of your child might try to make you pay child support.

This case is not a criminal case

A termination of parental rights action is a civil action, not a criminal action. You cannot be put in jail or subjected to any other criminal penalty if you lose this case. Criminal charges may be brought against parents for child abuse or neglect, but parents who are charged with those crimes are usually arrested close to the time DYFS first removes their children from them.

If you are named as a defendant in a criminal case, or if the prosecutor’s office is investigating you as a possible criminal defendant, make sure that the lawyer representing you in your termination of parental rights case knows about your criminal case. Also make sure that the lawyer defending you in the criminal case knows about your termination of parental rights case.