In re Ja'maire M.

Syllabus

The respondent father appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court terminating his parental rights with respect to his minor child. The child had previously been adjudicated neglected, but the father was not a party to the neglect petition filed by the petitioner, the Commis- sioner of Children and Families, and did not participate in the neglect proceeding because the mother claimed another man was the father of the child. Following the results of a paternity test, the trial court joined the father into the case and, thereafter, the trial court ordered specific steps for the father and the Department of Children and Families amended its permanency plan to focus on reunification with the father. The father did not fulfill the court-ordered steps and subsequently, the petitioner sought termination of the father's parental rights pursuant to statute (§ 17a-112), which the trial court granted. On appeal, the father claimed that the trial court erred by predicating its termination of paren- tal rights judgment on the prior neglect adjudication, which he claimed was rendered improperly because the child was adjudicated neglected in his absence and he had no opportunity to plead. Held that the trial court did not err in terminating the respondent father's parental rights by relying on a finding that the child was neglected, which was made at a previous proceeding at which the father was not a party, as the father's unpreserved claim was an impermissible collateral attack on a validly rendered final judgment of neglect; the father's absence from the neglect proceeding did not deprive him of any due process because, although the father was immediately joined into the case and advised of the remedies available to him to contest the neglect adjudication, the father acquiesced in the judgment of neglect and did not at any time avail himself of the avenues to challenge it, by filing a motion to open the judgment or to revoke commitment, and the important public p