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Eleventh Court Partially Reverses Termination Order in Drug-Exposure Case

Thomas Daley
New Texas Court of Appeals Opinion - Analyzed for Family Law Attorneys

In the Interest of M.L. and E.L., Children, 11-25-00287-CV, March 26, 2026.

On appeal from 326th District Court, Taylor County, Texas

Synopsis

The Eleventh Court of Appeals affirmed the termination order in part but reversed and remanded in part after parsing whether the evidence met the clear-and-convincing standard for multiple pleaded grounds—§ 161.001(b)(1)(D), (E), (M), and (Q)—and best interest. The opinion underscores that even in a drug-exposure record with multiple positive tests, appellate courts will still ground-by-ground audit the evidentiary link between the parent’s conduct, the child’s endangerment, and the statutory elements—especially where the record includes later sobriety, services progress, and a disrupted monitored return.

Relevance to Family Law

While this is a SAPCR termination appeal, the litigation lessons translate directly to contested divorce and custody cases where drug use, mental-health treatment, and “protective parent” narratives drive conservatorship and possession outcomes. For family-law litigators trying bench trials, the opinion is a reminder that (1) “endangerment” evidence must be organized around statutory elements, not generalized moral judgments, and (2) progress evidence (negative drug tests, treatment completion, stabilized housing/employment) must be framed either as rehabilitation (to defeat best interest/modify relief) or as too-late/too-thin (to support termination or severe restrictions). Finally, the court’s discussion of monitored return dynamics informs how to build (or attack) enforcement/variation records in high-risk custody cases—particularly where a third party in the household becomes the Department’s (or the other parent’s) re-escalation trigger.

Case Summary

Fact Summary

The Department received a February 2023 report that Mother was using ecstasy, cocaine, and methamphetamine while caring for M.L. (then approximately nine months old). Mother admitted recent cocaine use and tested positive (February 9, 2023) for cocaine, opiates, and oxycodone. Father was incarcerated. The case began in FBSS, but the risk profile escalated: in June 2023—while Mother was pregnant with E.L.—both Mother and M.L. tested positive for cocaine. The Department obtained temporary managing conservatorship of M.L. on June 26, 2023. E.L. was born July 10, 2023, and was also taken into temporary managing conservatorship shortly after birth.

A service plan was adopted as a court order in September 2023. Mother tested positive for cocaine again in October 2023, and again in June 2024 while pregnant with a third child, Z.F. During the pendency of M.L. and E.L.’s case, Mother lived with Z.F.’s father, J.F. After Z.F.’s July 2024 birth, the Department obtained temporary managing conservatorship of that child under a separate cause.

The record then shifted. Following Z.F.’s removal, Mother engaged in individual counseling, followed psychological-assessment recommendations, obtained medication management for anxiety/mental health, and completed intensive outpatient substance-abuse treatment. After the June 2024 positive test, Mother began regular drug screening with consistent negative results for illegal substances.

Based on that progress, the case moved into a monitored return in February 2025. The monitored return unraveled in May 2025 when J.F. tested positive for marihuana metabolite. Mother and the children remained negative; J.F. moved out; Mother left employment to be home full-time; and Mother offered to have a family member move in. Despite those steps, the trial court ended monitored return, and the children were placed with their paternal grandmother. Shortly thereafter, at a pretrial hearing, the Department represented that its final-hearing request was “still a little unclear” given the recent changes—setting the stage for a record in which progress and relapse-risk competed for primacy.

Issues Decided

Rules Applied

The court framed the appeal through familiar termination architecture:

The opinion also noted the Legislature’s 2025 amendments renumbering portions of § 161.001(b)(1), but applied the version in effect when the case was pending.

Application

This opinion reads like a blueprint for how the Eleventh Court wants termination records built—and how it will dismantle them when the proof is element-lite or causation-weak.

On the Department’s side of the ledger, the court had a chronological drug-use record that was not episodic: the case began with admitted cocaine use, continued with a February 2023 positive screen, escalated to a June 2023 positive for both Mother and M.L. while Mother was pregnant with E.L., and later included additional positives (October 2023; June 2024 during another pregnancy). Those facts are the classic building blocks for (D)/(E) endangerment theories, and they also tend to bleed into best interest because the factfinder may infer recurrence and future danger from past endangerment.

But the court also confronted meaningful rehabilitation evidence: counseling, psychological recommendations, medication management, completion of outpatient substance treatment, and an extended period of negative drug testing after June 2024—so significant that the Department itself supported a monitored return in February 2025. The monitored return’s termination in May 2025 was triggered not by Mother’s positive test, but by J.F.’s marihuana metabolite result—followed by Mother’s remedial steps (removing him from the home, adjusting employment, proposing additional adult supervision). That set of facts matters on appeal because it complicates the Department’s theme that the parent remains the source of ongoing endangerment and undermines simplistic “once positive, always unsafe” narratives.

Against that mixed record, the Eleventh Court did what termination appellate courts increasingly do in close records: it treated each predicate ground as an independent evidentiary burden and required a statutory fit, rather than allowing the global sense of “this is a drug case” to carry every subsection. And it treated best interest as a separate, clear-and-convincing inquiry that can be supported by endangerment evidence—but is still vulnerable when the record shows concrete, sustained changes plus ambiguity in the Department’s own permanency posture late in the case.

Holding

The Eleventh Court affirmed the termination order in part, concluding that some of the challenged findings and/or related determinations were supported under the clear-and-convincing standard when measured through the required legal- and factual-sufficiency review. In other words, the court held that at least part of the judgment could stand based on the evidentiary record and the deference owed to the factfinder on credibility and disputed facts.

The court reversed and remanded in part, holding that not all of the challenged termination grounds and/or associated findings survived a ground-by-ground sufficiency audit under § 161.001(b)(1) and the best-interest framework. The remand signals that, in the Eleventh Court’s view, one or more statutory predicates (and/or the way they were proven) did not meet the statutory elements at a clear-and-convincing level on this record, requiring further proceedings on the reversed portions.

Practical Application

For trial lawyers, the strategic takeaway is not “drug cases are hard” (they aren’t, factually)—it’s that proof discipline wins or loses accelerated appeals. When you plead multiple predicates—(D), (E), (M), (Q)—you should assume the court of appeals will demand an element-by-element pathway for each ground, not merely a narrative that sounds dangerous.

Three practice points translate beyond CPS cases into divorce/SAPCR bench trials:

  1. Household-member drug use is not automatically parental endangerment. If a third party’s use is the pivot point (as it was when monitored return ended), build the record on the parent’s knowledge, protective capacities, and realistic ability to exclude that person—or, on the defense side, build the record on prompt exclusion, boundary enforcement, and corroboration (leases, locks, third-party affidavits, safety plans).
  2. Progress evidence cuts both ways—control the framing. The Department’s agreement to monitored return is powerful defense evidence in a best-interest fight unless the Department builds a record that the return was a calculated risk, conditional, and later invalidated by specific safety failures. In private custody disputes, the analogue is temporary agreed orders: if you later pivot to a more extreme position, expect the opposing side to argue your earlier position is an admission that the child was safe.
  3. If you plead § 161.001(b)(1)(Q), prove “born addicted” with precision. In private litigation, the parallel is proving prenatal exposure harms in conservatorship disputes—do not rely on insinuation. If your theory requires medical causation (addiction vs. exposure; lawful prescription vs. illicit use), you must supply the records and testimony that make the statutory language true, not merely plausible.

Checklists

Building a Termination-Proof Endangerment Record (D) and (E)

Litigating § 161.001(b)(1)(Q) (Born Addicted) Without Getting Reversed

Using (or Defending Against) “Monitored Return” Evidence at Trial

Estoppel/Position-Change Arguments (When the Other Side “Swings” Late)

Citation

In the Interest of M.L. and E.L., Children, No. 11-25-00287-CV, 2026 WL ___ (Tex. App.—Eastland Mar. 26, 2026, mem. op.).

Full Opinion

Read the full opinion here

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