Connecticut Supreme Court
The Supreme Court advance released an opinion about guardianship and special immigrant juvenile status. I don’t review the decision because I normally don’t review decisions in cases like this, but I do provide the syllabus from the opinion.
Sylbabus:
Pursuant to statute (§ 45a-608n [b]), ‘‘[a]t any time during the pendency of
a petition . . . to appoint a guardian or coguardian . . . a party may
file a petition requesting the Probate Court to make findings . . . to
be used in connection with a petition [for] special immigrant juvenile
status under [federal law].’’
H, a minor child, traveled from Honduras, where his life was threatened,
to the United States in order to seek refuge with his mother, the peti-
tioner, who lives in Connecticut. Five weeks before H’s eighteenth birth-
day, the petitioner filed petitions seeking, inter alia, the appointment of
a coguardian and juvenile status findings pursuant to § 45a-608n (b)
so that H could obtain special immigrant status and avoid potential
deportation. The Probate Court then scheduled a hearing on a date after
H’s eighteenth birthday and ordered the Department of Children and
Families to conduct a study related to the guardianship petition. Shortly
before H’s birthday, the petitioner filed an emergency petition for find-
ings under § 45a-608n (b), which the Probate Court denied. Thereafter,
the petitioner and H appealed to the Superior Court from certain of the
Probate Court’s rulings, including the denial of the emergency petition.
The Superior Court dismissed the appeal for lack of subject matter
jurisdiction on the ground that H was no longer a minor, and the peti-
tioner and H appealed to the Appellate Court. While that appeal was
pending, the Probate Court issued a final decision denying the petitions
seeking appointment of a coguardian and juvenile status findings pursu-
ant to § 45a-608n (b) on the ground that H was no longer a minor. The
petitioner and H then appealed from the Probate Court’s final decision
to the Superior Court, which dismissed that appeal. Thereafter, the
petitioner and H filed a second appeal with the Appellate Court, which
consolidated the two appeals. The Appellate Court affirmed the judg-
ments of the Superior Court dismissing the probate appeals, concluding
that the Probate Court lacked authority to appoint a coguardian and to
make juvenile status findings under § 45a-608n (b) because H had
reached the age of eighteen. On the granting of certification, the peti-
tioner and H appealed to this court.
Held that the Appellate Court
improperly affirmed the Superior Court’s judgments dismissing the pro-
bate appeals, this court having concluded that the Probate Court was
not divested of authority to make juvenile status findings under § 45a-
608n (b) after H reached the age of eighteen during the pendency of
the underlying proceeding: although the text of § 45a-608n (b) requires
juvenile status findings upon the granting of certain guardianship peti-
tions, there was no statutory language expressly conditioning the Pro-
bate Court’s authority to make such findings on the granting of such a
petition; moreover, adding such restrictive language would be inconsis-
tent with the maxim that this court does not read language into statutes
and with the statutory (§ 45a-605 [a]) directive favoring a liberal con-
struction of § 45a-608n, recognizing the authority to make findings under
such circumstances was consistent with the overarching purpose of
§ 45a-608n, which is to facilitate access to the state court findings neces-
sary for federal juvenile status petitions, which must be filed with federal
immigration authorities before a child’s twenty-first birthday, and the
legislative history of § 45a-608n counseled in favor of a broader reading
of the statute as to those persons eligible to obtain predicate state court
findings necessary to render available the federal immigration benefits
of juvenile status.