Child Welfare practice in North Carolina is one dependent
upon forms, at least in the early stages of any juvenile court proceeding.
While not a formal requirement, the North Carolina Administrative Office of the
Courts has encouraged the use of its “Juvenile Petition” otherwise known as
form AOC-J -130. This form has seen much revision since it was first introduced
decades ago and is even now being revised, this time to add an attorney
signature line---something that has never appeared on the form in it’s entire multi-decade
history.
Legal forms persevere in this day in age because they serve an
important purpose: they are a proxy checklist for the pleading requirements
that are imposed by North Carolina Chapter 7B as well as the North Carolina
Rules of Civil Procedure. However, when it comes to the initial juvenile
petition and form AOC J-130, some parts of the form are more important than
others.
For instance, the address blocks for the child and parents
and the age blocks for child at the top of the form are necessary to properly
establish subject matter jurisdiction and appropriate venue. If the child is
not actually a child (i.e. above the age of majority) or does not live in or
cannot be found in the same county as the petitioning county department of
social services, then issues of standing and subject matter jurisdiction will
impede the petition and the petition must ultimately be dismissed. See In re A.P., __N.C. App.__ (April 18, 2017). A court’s subject matter
jurisdiction can also depend on proper pleading in those blocks containing the
allegations of either abuse, neglect or dependency and the verification blocks.
(See In re T.R.P., 173 N.C. App. 541 (2005); Matter of Triscari Children, 109 N.C. App. 285 (1993)).
But what about the other blocks on the form?
The North Carolina Court of Appeals
has definitely stated that it is necessary to properly check whether the
director of a county department of social services is signing the juvenile petition or a designated representative
and a false step here has led to the dismissal of a juvenile petition. See In
re A.J.H.-R, 184 N.C. App. 177 (2005) (social work supervisor rather
director signs petition when checking “director on juvenile petition form).
While this area on the “director”/designated representative”
section of the form is an area of notable importance, there are a number of
other areas which don’t seem to raise as much concern for the appellate courts.
For example, while it prominently commandeers the lower fourth of the juvenile
petition’s second page, the “witness” section of the form often goes unfilled
and thus far no one has successfully raised issues that a lack of named
witnesses deprived a party of notice or deprived the petitioning party of
standing.
Neither has there been much concern about the check boxes
on the front that summarily allow a party to allege the condition of a child as
an abused, neglected or dependent juvenile. However, it is easy to imagine that
failure to check these boxes accompanied by a failure to properly plead abuse,
neglect or dependency in areas provided lower on the form would lead to
trouble.
So the
question arises as to the importance of the attorney signature line that has
most recently been placed on the form. One line of reasoning states that the
requirements of North Carolina Rule of Civil Procedure 11 require the attorney
to sign any pleading, motion or other paper submitted to a court. See N.C. Gen Stat. 1A-1, Rule 11. However, this position ignores the fact that in
the area of child welfare, North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 7B
specifically authorizes a director or the director’s designated representative
to file a juvenile petition without
the assistance of an attorney. See N.C. Gen. Stat. 7B-401.1. What’s more, many
juvenile petitions in many counties are not reviewed by attorneys as they are
filed after-hours and contain information that cannot be ethically certified by
the attorney through a signature.
So in effect,
the signature line added by the Administrative Office of the Courts is now
creating, on the one hand, a plausible scenario for county DSS attorney’s to
run afoul of ethical requirements if they sign pleadings that they have not
absolutely vetted with social work staff and by reviewing documentation. On the
other hand, the AOC has invited a new rash of appeals where a petition is
concerned where the DSS attorney fails to sign the pleading, perhaps due to the
very fact that the pleading could not be ethically certified under Rule 11.
And so it
goes.
As with so
many others whose noble acts seemed good at the time, the North Carolina
Administrative Office of the Courts is about to learn about the law of
unintended consequences, consequences that will probably be detrimental to the integrity
of child welfare practice in North Carolina and will in all likelihood
delay permanence for dependent children who must wait additional months for unnecessary appeals to pass before they can be legally clear for adoption.
