4.10Jurisdiction and Authority Over Adults

The court has jurisdiction over adults and may make orders affecting adults where the court determines it to be necessary for a child’s physical, mental, or moral well-being. MCL 712A.6.¹ However, entry of an order affecting an adult must be incidental to the court’s jurisdiction over the child. Id. 

Note: The authority to fashion remedies under MCL 712A.6 extends beyond MCL 712A.18, which provides dispositional alternatives. In re Macomber, 436 Mich 386, 389-393, 398-400 (1990).²

The court may also order a parent, nonparent adult, or other person out of the child’s home before trial where: (1) the petition contains allegations of abuse; (2) after a hearing, the court finds probable cause that an adult in the child’s home committed the abuse; and (3) the court finds on the record that there is a substantial risk of harm to the child’s life, physical health, or mental well-being if the adult alleged to have committed the abuse is permitted to remain in the child’s home. MCL 712A.13a(4). If the court does not order the adult to leave the child’s home, the child will be placed with an individual in whose custody the child is adequately safeguarded from the risk of harm to the child’s life, health, or mental well-being. MCL 712A.13a(5). MCL 712A.6b gives the court authority to enter very specific orders against nonparent adults. See Section 7.6(E) for orders affecting nonparent adults.

Note: MCL 712A.13a(1)(h) defines a nonparent adult as a person, regardless of where he or she lives, who is 18 years of age or older and has substantial and regular contact with the child, has a close personal relationship with the child’s parent or person responsible for the child’s health or welfare, and is not related to the child by blood or affinity to the third degree.

Although “courts may assume jurisdiction over a child on the basis of the adjudication of one parent[,]” procedural “due process requires that every parent receive an adjudication hearing before the state can interfere with his or her parental rights.”³ In re Sanders, 495 Mich 394, 407, 412-413 n 8, 415, 422-423 (2014) (finding unconstitutional the one-parent doctrine, which permitted the court to “enter dispositional orders affecting the parental rights of both parents” once “jurisdiction [was] established by adjudication of only one parent”).⁴ “[N]either the admissions made by [the adjudicated parent] nor [the unadjudicated parent’s] failure to object to those admissions constituted an adjudication of [the unadjudicated parent’s] fitness[.]” In re SJ Temples, unpublished per curiam opinion of the Court of Appeals, issued March 12, 2015 (Docket No. 323246)⁵ (finding that the trial court violated the unadjudicated parent’s “due process rights by subjecting him to dispositional orders without first adjudicating him as unfit[]”).

A parent’s constitutional right to direct his or her child’s care and custody before the parent is adjudicated is not without limit; “[w]hen a child has been placed into care by an unchallenged order of the court, the state has a legitimate and important interest in protecting the child’s health and safety.” In re Dixon (On Reconsideration), ___ Mich App ___, ___ (2023). In Dixon, the trial court was permitted to continue the child’s placement in foster care until the DHHS could properly investigate placement of the child with a nonrelative as proposed by the child’s incarcerated father. Dixon, ___ Mich App at ___. If “vindication of an unadjudicated parent’s custodial right” would require the court to order a change in the child’s custody and would terminate the state’s custody of the child, the state’s interest in protecting the child’s health and safety permits it to continue the child’s temporary placement with foster parents while an investigation takes place to determine whether the new placement is appropriate. Id. at ___.