In the Interest of P.H.-S., Minor Child

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 26-0596
Filed June 10, 2026
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In the Interest of P.H.-S., Minor Child,
C.S., Father,
Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Crawford County,
The Honorable Kristal L. Phillips, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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Eric D. Puryear and Eric S. Mail of Puryear Law P.C., Davenport, attorneys
for appellant father.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Tamara Knight, Assistant Attorney
General, attorneys for appellee State.

Justin F. Reininger of Boerner & Goldsmith Law Firm, P.C., Ida Grove,
attorney and guardian ad litem for minor child.
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Considered without oral argument
by Greer, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.
Opinion by Langholz, J.

1
LANGHOLZ, Judge.

A father appeals the juvenile court’s termination of his parental rights
to his five-year-old daughter. 1 He argues only that the court should have
instead closed the case with a bridge order placing the daughter in her
mother’s legal custody with continued supervised visitation for the father.
On our de novo review, we agree with the juvenile court that the case could
not safely close with a bridge order and that entry of a bridge order would not
be in the daughter’s best interest. We thus affirm the juvenile court’s order
terminating the father’s parental rights to the daughter.

This family came to the attention of the Iowa Department of Health
and Human Services (“HHS”) in September 2024, when HHS received a
report that the father was using methamphetamine while caring for the
daughter. At the time, the father and mother were separated and informally
equally sharing the physical care of the then-three-year-old daughter. The
daughter tested positive for methamphetamine and amphetamine. The
father’s girlfriend tested positive for methamphetamine. And the father
repeatedly refused to submit to drug testing. He admitted that he had used
methamphetamine six months before but claimed the daughter’s positive test
was because of his girlfriend and that he would also test positive because of
his contact with the girlfriend and others who use drugs.

Initially, HHS told the father he could not have unsupervised contact
with the daughter until he complied with their request for a drug test. But in
late October, the father texted the HHS worker that he was going to the
mother’s house to take the daughter. And he indeed showed up at her house

1
We avoid using the parties’ names to respect their privacy because this opinion—
unlike the juvenile court’s order—is public. Compare Iowa Code § 232.147(2) (2025), with
id. §§ 602.4301(2), 602.5110; see also Iowa Ct. R. 21.25.

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and did not leave until law enforcement responded. So the State filed this
child-in-need-of-assistance case. And the juvenile court removed the
daughter from the father’s custody, leaving her in the mother’s custody.

Over the next seventeen months, the father made little progress
addressing these issues that led to the removal. He repeatedly refused HHS’s
ongoing requests to submit to drug testing or to complete substance-use and
mental-health evaluations as ordered by the juvenile court.2 And he peppered
HHS workers with angry and inappropriate texts and emails.

Shortly after this case started, the father was charged with stalking and
harassing the mother for his conduct in October and with child
endangerment for his exposure of the daughter to methamphetamine. The
criminal case remained pending at the time of the termination hearing. It also
resulted in the entry of a no-contact order protecting the mother that was still
in effect. And because of the father’s failure to comply with the conditions of
his pretrial release in that case—including repeatedly failing to meet with the
probation officer and consuming alcohol—the district court found the father
in contempt a couple of weeks before the termination hearing. So the court
sentenced him to 180 days in jail and suspended all but seven days of the
sentence to motivate the father to begin complying with his pretrial-release
supervision.

When the father attends visits, they have generally gone well, with the
daughter showing a close and positive relationship with him. But the father

2
As a part of the pretrial-release supervision in his criminal case, the father did
submit to drug testing in November 2025 that was negative for all substances. And a
couple of days before the termination hearing, the father arranged his own urine drug test
through a provider in the Des Moines area that came back negative. He also submitted to
a hair test, but the results had not been returned by the time of the hearing.

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almost always arrives about fifteen minutes late to the visits. And when he is
much later than that—which occurs not infrequently—the visits do not
happen at all.3 The uncertainty of whether the father will arrive causes the
daughter much anxiety—the night before visits and while waiting to see if he
will arrive—and distress when he does not arrive. Indeed, shortly before the
termination trial, the father missed the visit scheduled on the daughter’s
birthday. And another visit had to end early after the father became agitated
when the visit supervisor tried to redirect him from talking to the daughter
about how “he might have to go to jail” and telling her “that people were
lying about things.”

At the March 2026 termination hearing, much of the focus was on
whether a bridge order that permitted the father to continue to have some
visitation could be an appropriate alternative to termination. The father
argued that a bridge order would let the daughter retain a relationship with
him and protect her by letting the mother “say there’s not going to be any
sort of visits as long as there’s not a drug test” and that “he would comply
with those testing requirements.” The State disagreed, arguing that
termination was in the daughter’s best interest and highlighting “that the
father has had just a continuous disregard for the orders from the juvenile
court” and the criminal court. The daughter’s guardian ad litem also
recommended termination because “that’s the only outcome . . . that doesn’t
put [the daughter] in a continued state of turmoil” and because of his
concerns “with the logistics of how a bridge order would work.”

The mother too testified that she believed termination of the father’s
parental rights was in the daughter’s best interest and that she did not believe

3
A supervisor of visits during the later part of the case said that during the time
she was involved, the father had attended about forty-two visits and missed about ten.

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a bridge order would work. She did not believe the father would comply with
her requests for drug tests, expressed concerns that he would react negatively
and her “phone would be blowing up like it used to,” and shared that she
would not feel safe. She also testified about her reservations as to whether
the father’s parents would have sufficient ability to control the conduct of the
father or other family members to properly supervise visitation.

The juvenile court found that the State proved grounds for termination
under paragraphs “e” and “f” of Iowa Code section 232.116(1) (2025) and
that termination was in the daughter’s best interest. The court also explained
that because of the daughter’s “bond with her father, this court has given [a]
great deal of consideration to a bridge order in lieu of the termination of
parental rights.” But it reasoned “that a bridge order would only serve to
transfer [the father’s] vile and spiteful behavior from the Department to [the
mother] and would not result in [the father] being any more engaged or
consistent in visits which would only lead to continued instability and
uncertainty for” the daughter. The court also declined to apply any of the
permissive statutory exceptions to termination. And so, the court terminated
the father’s parental rights to the daughter. The father now appeals.

The father argues that rather than terminating his parental rights, the
juvenile court should have closed the child-in-need-of-assistance case with a
bridge order placing the daughter in her mother’s legal custody while still
granting him visitation rights.4 See Iowa Code § 232.103A(1) (authorizing the
juvenile court to “close a child in need of assistance case by transferring
jurisdiction over the child’s custody, physical care, and visitation to the

4
On appeal, the father does not specify the precise terms of the bridge order he
urges we should enter. But in the juvenile court, he requested a bridge order “giving Mom
the ability to make all important decision[s]” for the daughter and sought only visitation.

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district court through a bridge order” when certain criteria are met). We
review the juvenile court’s decision de novo, giving “respectful
consideration” to the court’s factual findings, especially when based on
credibility determinations. In re W.M., 957 N.W.2d 305, 312 (Iowa 2021).

One of the requirements for entering a bridge order is the court’s
determination “that the child in need of assistance case can safely close once
orders for custody, physical care, and visitation are entered by the district
court.” Iowa Code § 232.103A(1)(e). We must also consider the child’s best
interest. See id. §§ 232.116(2), 232.1. And we are mindful that “[e]ntry of a
bridge order is not the preferred solution when there is long-standing discord
between the parents.” In re I.L., No. 25-0477, 2025 WL 2538875, at *4 (Iowa
Ct. App. Sep. 4, 2025); see also In re W.H., No. 24-2073, 2025 WL 708347, at
*3 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 5, 2025) (“A bridge order, at bottom, requires two
parents to work together to arrange custody, physical care, and visitation.”).

Because of the father’s limited progress during this case, we cannot
find that the case could have safely closed with a bridge order. His visitation
was still only supervised. And his apparent unwillingness or inability to
consistently arrive on time to the visitation—or sometimes to even attend at
all—has harmed the daughter. A no-contact order still protected the mother
from any contact with the father at the time of the termination hearing. And
the father still had pending criminal charges—including for stalking and
harassing the mother in October 2024 in the lead-up to this case. He failed to
comply with the requirements of his pretrial release in that case on multiple
occasions—resulting in the court finding him in contempt. So too did he fail
to comply with HHS’s repeated requests for him to submit to drug testing
and to complete substance-use and mental-health evaluations.

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Like the juvenile court, we thus see little prospect that the father could
cooperate with the mother to coordinate visitation. He essentially asked the
court to trust that his behavior would be better with the mother enforcing the
drug-testing and supervision requirements for visitation rather than HHS.
But past actions are often the best predictor of future behavior. See In re T.B.,
604 N.W.2d 660, 662 (Iowa 2000) (“The future can be gleaned from
evidence of the parents’ past performance and motivations.”). And
especially given the already-challenging relationship between the parents, we
see no reason to believe that the father would be more compliant with a bridge
order than he has been for the past seventeen months of this case or his
conditions of pretrial release in his criminal case.

This probable continued discord between the parents is not in the
daughter’s best interest. See In re K.J., No. 26-0373, 2026 WL 1162655, at *3
(Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 29, 2026). Neither is it in the daughter’s best interest to
be subjected to continued anxiety and stress about whether the father would
actually attend his scheduled visitation. While it is apparent that the daughter
and father love each other and have a close bond, it is not in the daughter’s
best interest to continue to wait in the hopes that “someday [the father] will
learn to be a parent.” See In re A.M., 843 N.W.2d 100, 112 (Iowa 2014)
(cleaned up).

We thus affirm the juvenile court’s decision to terminate the father’s
parental rights rather than closing the case with a bridge order.

AFFIRMED.

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