What’s the Difference Between Relinquishment and Termination of Parental Rights?

What’s the Difference Between Relinquishment and Termination of Parental Rights? Tahlequah attorney, Ryan Cannonie, discusses the difference between relinquishing your parental rights and the State terminating them. This is a question that comes up sometimes is when you're in a deprived case and things haven't gone well, or you recognize that you can't actually take care of your kids right now, or in the immediate future, what do you do? Well, if there's already a case going, if you're pretty far into it, beyond three months into it, then you could be looking at the state filing a motion to terminate your parental rights. Now, if your parental rights are terminated, that can either be done by a jury trial or a non-jury trial, or you can fail to appear and they be terminated kind of almost by default, there's some testimony required, but there's not a formal process, like you get with a jury trial, it just happens during the docket is what I mean by that. Now you can have an attorney and go in there and fight, call witnesses, challenge their witnesses. If you go through a jury trial, you may win, if you win, that doesn't mean your case is dismissed. It just means that the termination failed and your case continues to go on with more reviews and they can try to terminate again at a later date, you can maybe prove yourself and get your kid back. Or they might recommend something like a guardianship. Now, relinquishment on the other hand. Now you can do a relinquishment at pretty much any time in a deprived case, even after they file a petition to terminate your parental rights, you can still relinquish your parental rights. Now, when you relinquish you and your attorney will go over a relinquishment form, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered. Need An Attorney? Give us a call at (918) 458-2677 or submit a legal question at https://www.tahlequahattorney.com/ Want The Transcript? https://www.tahlequahattorney.com/tah... Join The Group! Have an Oklahoma legal question? There's a Facebook Group for that. Join me and the discussion by clicking the link and hitting "Join:"   / oklahoma.legal.questions