In re Teagan K.-O.

Citations

• 335 Conn. 745

Syllabus

The respondent father appealed from the trial court's denial of his motion to dismiss the petition filed by the petitioner, the Commissioner of Children and Families, to adjudicate T, the child of the respondent parents, neglected. T was born in Florida, and, after the Florida Depart- ment of Children and Families took emergency custody of T and con- tacted the Connecticut Department of Children and Families to report that the respondent mother had given birth to T, the petitioner filed the neglect petition at issue. Shortly thereafter, the Florida Department of Children and Families filed in a Florida court a motion to transfer jurisdiction to the Connecticut court on the basis of the family's history with service providers and child protective services in Connecticut. A Florida magistrate issued a report and a recommendation to grant the motion. The magistrate concluded that Connecticut was a more conve- nient forum, in part because the petitioner wanted to add T to a pending dependency case in Connecticut filed in connection with a petition for termination of the respondents' parental rights with respect to T's older sibling. The Florida court ratified and adopted the magistrate's recom- mendation to transfer jurisdiction to the Connecticut court. Subse- quently, the father filed a motion to dismiss the pending neglect petition filed in Connecticut on the ground of lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The trial court denied that motion, and the father appealed, claiming, inter alia, that, regardless of whether a petition to terminate the respon- dents' parental rights with respect to another child of the respondents was pending in Connecticut when they relocated to Florida, a Connecti- cut court could not exercise subject matter jurisdiction over T's neglect petition because any neglect of her would not occur in Connecticut. The petitioner claimed, inter alia, that the determination by a Florida court that Connecticut would be a more appropriate forum provided a