In re G.C.

Summary

The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a permanent guardianship order and the denial of the parents’ motion for relief under Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). The court held that a permanent guardianship order does not have prospective application under Rule 60(b)(5), and that the return of the child’s sibling to the father’s custody did not constitute extraordinary circumstances warranting relief under Rule 60(b)(5) or (b)(6). The court also rejected the parents’ plain-error and ineffective-assistance arguments concerning separate permanency timelines and declined to review an unpreserved challenge to parent-time.

Holdings

1. A permanent guardianship order does not have prospective application within the meaning of Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5) because it does not require the court to supervise changing, provisional, or tentative conditions; instead, it permanently changes the child's legal status and terminates the juvenile court's jurisdiction.
2. Sister's return to Father's custody was not an extraordinary change in operative facts justifying relief from G.C.'s permanent guardianship order under Rule 60(b)(5).
3. Rule 60(b)(6) did not provide an alternative basis for relief because the asserted circumstances fell within the subject matter of Rule 60(b)(5), and the circumstances were not extraordinary or exceptional.
4. Parents could not establish plain error or ineffective assistance because no clear legal authority required consolidation of the siblings' cases or use of the same permanency timeline, and counsel was not objectively unreasonable for declining to pursue an unsupported and likely futile request.
5. The court declined to review Parents' challenge to the reasonableness of the parent-time order because the issue was not presented to the juvenile court in a manner that gave it an opportunity to rule on the asserted error, and Parents did not argue for an exception to preservation.

Questions Presented

1. Whether a permanent guardianship order has prospective application within the meaning of Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5).
2. Whether Sister's return to Father's custody constituted an extraordinary circumstance justifying relief under Rule 60(b)(5) or Rule 60(b)(6).
3. Whether the juvenile court plainly erred by handling G.C.'s and Sister's cases on separate permanency timelines.
4. Whether Parents received ineffective assistance when counsel failed to request that the siblings' cases be consolidated or placed on the same permanency timeline.
5. Whether Parents preserved their challenge to the reasonableness of the parent-time order.

Disposition

affirmed