Court of Appeals Holds MCR 2.612 Applies in Adoption Proceedings
Opinion Published: July 1, 2026 (Mariani, Patel, Swartzle)
Docket No. 376170
Wayne County Circuit Court
Holding: The Court of Appeals affirmed the Trial Court’s order, holding that MCR 2.612 applies in adoption proceedings. Further, the Trial Court properly vacated its order terminating respondent-father’s parental rights under MCR 2.612(C)(1)(a) because the court made a material mistake of fact when it entered the original termination order.
Facts: Respondent-father and petitioner-mother married in July 2014 and had one child together: AYS. After the marriage deteriorated years later, petitioner-mother filed for divorce, and the Midland Circuit Court entered a default judgment of divorce in 2018. The court awarded sole legal and physical custody of AYS to petitioner-mother, while the court granted respondent-father supervised parenting time at a designated agency in Saginaw. He was also ordered to pay child support. In 2021, the Midland Court issued an order transferring the case to the Wayne Circuit Court and requiring the respondent-father’s supervised parenting time to take place at an agency in Garden City, as neither party resided in Midland County and AYS resided in Wayne County with petitioners. Although the Wayne Court accepted the transfer in June 2021, for reasons unknown, the case was not reassigned to a Wayne judge until May 2022.
Petitioner-mother married petitioner-stepfather in 2023. In June 2023, petitioners initiated the instant stepparent-adoption proceedings seeking termination of respondent-father’s parental rights under MCL 710.51(6). A few months later, the Trial Court issued an order terminating respondent-father’s parental rights to AYS. Petitioners were present at the hearing, but respondent-father was not. At the hearing, petitioner-mother confirmed that all the information she had presented was true and accurate, and that respondent-father had not provided her with any support over the last two years and had not had any contact with the child over the last few years. By the end of 2023, the court entered an order of adoption.
Six months later, the respondent-father, in propria persona, moved to set aside the order terminating his parental rights to AYS, explaining that he failed to appear for the September 2023 hearing because he did not receive proper notice of the hearing. The petitioners argued that revisiting the decision would undermine the Adoption Code’s core purpose of promptly achieving permanence and stability for adoptees, and that the decision was well founded. Petitioners also argued that the Trial Court lacked authority to revisit the termination decision because respondent-father had not timely sought that relief under MCR 3.806, there were no grounds to overlook that untimeliness, and MCR 2.612 was inapplicable to adoption proceedings.
In December 2024, following an additional hearing on the matter, the trial court issued a written opinion and order vacating its prior order involuntarily terminating respondent-father’s parental rights. The court concluded that respondent-father could seek relief from the termination order under MCR 2.612 and that such relief was warranted because the information brought to the court’s attention after it had entered that order demonstrated that “the two-year no contact requirement of MCL 710.51(6)(b) was not met.” The court explained that petitioners had filed their petition for stepparent adoption on June 16, 2023, that respondent-father “had no means to enforce his rights to visitation before May 9, 2022” as a result of the transfer issues, and that petitioner-mother had not been “agreeable to” respondent-father’s requests for contact with AYS. The court concluded that its termination order “was entered by mistake given that the Court was unaware of this information” and that, “had [it] been aware of this [information] at the termination hearing, [it] would not have entered” the order. The petitioners appealed.
Key Appellate Rulings:
MCR 2.612 applies to Adoption Proceedings
The Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ contention that the Trial Court lacked authority to award relief from its prior termination order under MCR 2.612. The general rules of civil procedure apply to adoption proceedings unless subchapter 3.800 or the law provides otherwise.
Although MCL 710.64(1) and MCR 3.806 establish procedures for seeking rehearing in adoption proceedings, neither provision prohibits individuals from seeking relief under MCR 2.612. The provisions do not refer to MCR 2.612, or any other rule of civil procedure contained in chapter 2. They also do not provide that rehearing is the only avenue for potential relief from a previously entered order in an adoption proceeding.
Further, the petitioners’ argument that permitting a party to seek relief under MCR 2.612 in adoption proceedings would contravene the “fundamental principle of the Michigan Adoption Code that adopted children are best served through the prompt and final resolution of legal proceedings,” is not at odds with the Adoption Code’s stated purposes, which are not limited to promptness but also comprise “provid[ing] procedures and services that will safeguard and promote the best interests of each adoptee in need of adoption and that will protect the rights of all parties concerned” and “support[ing] the permanency of a finalized adoption by allowing all interested parties to participate in proceedings regarding the adoptee.” The Court of Appeals ultimately found that the application of MCR 2.612, and the discretion it affords Trial Courts to provide relief from prior judgments and orders in limited circumstances, comports with the full range of the Adoption Code’s stated purposes and the courts’ role in their proper balancing.
Further, petitioners heavily relied on In re Neagos, 176 Mich App 406; 439 NW2d 357 (1989), and the Court did not find it to be convincing in this case. Specifically, the Court articulated that it is not bound to follow published cases issued before November 1, 1990, if it concludes it is distinguishable or warrants reversal. The Court found that the facts in In re Neagos, on its facts, are plainly distinguishable from the current case. There, the petitioner actively participated in the adoption proceedings, and she knowingly and voluntarily relinquished her parental rights when she consented to the adoption of her children. Neagos, 176 Mich App at 407-408, 412. Here, by contrast, respondent-father’s parental rights were involuntarily terminated through proceedings in which he did not participate, and he only became aware of those proceedings months after his parental rights had been terminated. Furthermore, the Neagos petitioner did not seek to undo the consented-to adoption until four years had passed, id. at 407-408, 410, whereas here, respondent father sought relief from the involuntary termination of his parental rights well within a year of learning of the termination, and thus, in a timely fashion under MCR 2.612. See MCR 2.612(C)(2).
Thus, under a plain reading of the Michigan statutes and court rules, a Trial Court has the authority to grant relief to a party in an adoption proceeding under MCR 2.612. To the extent that Neagos is inconsistent with this conclusion, the Court of Appeals declines to follow it.
The Trial Court Correctly Vacated the Prior Termination Order
The Court of Appeals saw no reversible error in the Trial Court’s decision to vacate its prior termination order based upon a material mistake. At the time the parental rights were terminated, the Trial Court was unaware that respondent-father could not visit, contact, or communicate with the child, though he repeatedly sought additional contact with the child, and had significant obstacles in enforcing his parenting time rights due to the delays in transferring the custody case.
It was the petitioners’ burden to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the statute’s requirements were satisfied and because respondent-father attempted to maintain a relationship with AYS, repeatedly requested parenting time, and faced circumstances that impaired his ability to exercise visitation, the Trial Court did not clearly err in determining that the statutory standard had not been established.
Considering this conclusion and the facts presented in this case, the Trial Court did not reversibly err by vacating its prior order terminating respondent-father’s parental rights to AYS pursuant to MCR 2.612(C)(1)(a). And had the Trial Court known these facts, the statutory requirements of MCL 710.51(6)(b) would not have been satisfied.
