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Pleadings Required to Deny Parent Access | In the Interest of K.H. and D.H. (2026)

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

In the Interest of K.H. and D.H., Children, 02-26-00123-CV, July 16, 2026.

On appeal from 360th District Court, Tarrant County, Texas

Synopsis

A trial court cannot deny a parent all possession and access in a SAPCR unless that relief is supported by a live pleading. A request to restrict or limit possession under Texas Family Code Section 153.193 is not the same as a request to eliminate access altogether, and relief expressly abandoned in open court cannot support the final order.

Relevance to Family Law

This opinion matters well beyond CPS-adjacent SAPCRs. For Texas family-law litigators handling divorce, modification, custody, or nonparent conservatorship disputes, the case is a sharp reminder that the pleadings still define the court’s power to grant relief. If a party wants a complete denial of access, that request must be pleaded plainly and preserved through trial; asking for supervised visitation, restrictions, or other limitations will not support a judgment cutting off possession entirely. The case also underscores the appellate risk created when trial positions evolve during trial but the record is not cleaned up with precision.

Case Summary

Fact Summary

Mother and Father are the parents of twin children born in 2014. Father initiated a modification proceeding involving an earlier Missouri child-support order. After suit was filed, the Department became involved based on allegations of sexual abuse by Father, domestic violence between the parents, physical abuse by Mother’s husband, and neglectful supervision by Mother. The children were removed, with one child placed in foster care and the other, who had developmental and disability-related needs, placed in a residential treatment setting.

The Department filed an original petition seeking protection, conservatorship, and termination. As the case progressed, the stated goal included reunification, and both parents were placed on service plans addressing housing, employment, parenting, mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence. Those plans also contemplated parental visitation.

By final trial, however, the Department affirmatively changed course. It announced that it was no longer seeking termination and instead asked to be named permanent managing conservator while both parents were to be named possessory conservators. The Department’s permanency specialist likewise testified that Mother should be a possessory conservator and should have supervised access. No party pursued a live request that Mother be denied all possession and access.

Despite that procedural posture, the trial court entered final SAPCR orders that denied Mother any possession and access to either child. As to one child, the court appointed Father sole managing conservator and specifically withheld any access for Mother unless and until she later appeared and requested it. As to the other child, the court appointed the Department permanent managing conservator, Father possessory conservator, and again denied Mother any possessory conservatorship and any access. Mother appealed.

Issues Decided

Rules Applied

The court applied several familiar but often outcome-determinative procedural and family-law rules:

Application

The court’s analysis on access was straightforward and procedural in the best sense of that term. The Department’s original petition had included far more severe relief, including termination and allegations that parental possession or access would endanger the children. But that was not the trial posture that remained live when evidence closed. At trial, the Department expressly told the court it was no longer seeking termination and was instead asking that both parents be named possessory conservators. The trial court itself recognized that the case had effectively become a custody dispute between the parents. The Department’s own permanency specialist then reinforced that Mother should have supervised access.

That shift mattered. Under Rule 301, the final order had to conform to the relief actually pleaded and still being sought. And under In re N.H., once the Department unequivocally abandoned its prior position in open court, those abandoned requests no longer had any legal force as support for the judgment. The appellate court treated abandonment as a question of law, reviewed de novo, and concluded the Department had clearly abandoned any request for complete denial of Mother’s access.

From there, the mismatch between requested relief and granted relief became dispositive. A request for restriction, limitation, or supervision is not a request for zero access. The court accepted the distinction Mother pressed: Section 153.193 speaks in terms of restrictions and limitations, not elimination. Because no party maintained a live pleading seeking total denial of access, the trial court’s order denying Mother any possession and access exceeded the pleadings and required reversal.

On conservatorship, however, the result was different. Although Mother challenged the trial court’s decision not to appoint her as a conservator, the appellate court treated that issue through the ordinary abuse-of-discretion lens and found no basis for reversal on the record presented. The opinion notes that Mother’s argument focused largely on evidence concerning Father rather than on why the trial court lacked discretion to decline her own appointment. In other words, the pleading defect that doomed the access provisions did not automatically invalidate the conservatorship rulings.

Holding

The court held that the trial court reversibly erred by denying Mother all possession and access to the children because no live pleading requested that relief. The Department had expressly abandoned in open court its earlier requests that would have supported termination or complete denial of access, and no other party pleaded for that result. The court therefore reversed the portions of the SAPCR orders denying Mother access and remanded for further proceedings and for the entry of orders addressing Mother’s access rights.

The court also held, however, that Mother did not obtain reversal of the conservatorship rulings merely by showing the access error. The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s orders insofar as Mother challenged the decision not to appoint her as a conservator. Thus, the disposition was affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.

Practical Application

For trial lawyers, this is a pleadings case first and a best-interest case second. The strategic lesson is that when you seek to curtail a parent’s contact with a child, you must be exact about the relief requested. If you want supervised visitation, plead supervised visitation. If you want therapeutic visitation only, plead that. If you want suspension of access pending conditions, plead suspension. And if you want complete denial of possession and access, say so expressly. Texas courts may have broad discretion on conservatorship and possession issues, but that discretion still operates inside the perimeter drawn by the live pleadings.

The opinion is especially useful in several recurring family-law contexts:

Practitioners should also pay attention to the court’s treatment of abandonment. The Department did not need to file an amended petition to abandon its prior requests; its unequivocal trial announcement was enough. That is both useful and dangerous. Useful, because it allows parties to narrow issues efficiently. Dangerous, because an imprecise statement in open court can inadvertently withdraw critical relief and create a reversible mismatch between pleadings and judgment.

From an appellate-preservation standpoint, this case offers a clean blueprint. If the final order imposes a complete denial of access not supported by live pleadings, frame the issue as a Rule 301 error, identify any oral abandonment in the reporter’s record, and distinguish between “restriction” and “elimination” of access. That argument may be considerably stronger than a pure legal- or factual-sufficiency challenge to the best-interest evidence.

Checklists

Pleading for Denial or Restriction of Access

Cleaning Up the Trial Record

Preventing Rule 301 Reversal

Defending Against an Unpleaded No-Access Order

For CPS and Hybrid SAPCR Cases

Citation

In the Interest of K.H. and D.H., Children, No. 02-26-00123-CV, ___ S.W.3d ___, 2026 WL ___ (Tex. App.—Fort Worth July 16, 2026, no pet.) (mem. op.).

Full Opinion

Read the full opinion here

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