Severance: Permanent Termination of the Parent-Child Relationship

You may use the forms on this page if the following factors apply to your situation:

• You are a person who has a legitimate interest in the welfare of one or more children, who are present in this state (or in another state if placed there by order of this court);
• You want a court order to permanently terminate the legal rights, privileges, duties and obligations between one or both parents and one or more of their children (except the right of the children to receive support and to inherit from the parent(s));
• The parent or parents whose rights you want to terminate have neglected, abused, or abandoned the child through failure to support and maintain reasonable contact, AND/OR
• The parent or parents are unable to fulfill the responsibilities of parenting due to mental illness, lack of mental capacity, or chronic drug or alcohol abuse, and there are no reasonable grounds to believe those conditions will change in the foreseeable future, AND/OR
• The parent(s) are deprived of civil liberties or incarcerated due to conviction of a felony of a type regarded as proving unfitness, such as a violent crime against the other parent or another child, or the sentence is so long that the children would be deprived of a normal home for a period of years,
• The person thought to be or who claims to be the father did not file a claim of paternity or a court case to establish paternity as prescribed in A.R.S. Section 8-106,
• The parent or parents have signed papers to relinquish their rights to the children to an agency or to consent to adoption.
• The identity of the parent is unknown and continues to be unknown following three months of diligent efforts to identify and locate the parent.
• The parent has had parental rights to another child terminated within the past two years for reasons identical to those to be raised in this case and unable to discharge parental duties for those same reasons.
• You may NOT use this packet to cut off or give up your own parental rights.