Filed 9/10/26 In re T.Q. CA2/5
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION FIVE
In re T.Q., a Person Coming B348484 c/w B350452
Under the Juvenile Court Law.
_____________________________ (Los Angeles County
LOS ANGELES COUNTY Super. Ct. No. DK22840B)
DEPARTMENT OF
CHILDREN AND FAMILY
SERVICES,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
MIGUEL T.,
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL from orders of the Superior Court of Los Angeles
County, Stephen C. Marpet, Commissioner. Affirmed.
Lillian F. Hamrick, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Dawyn R. Harrison, County Counsel, Jacklyn K. Louie,
Assistant County Counsel, and Tracey F. Dodds, Principal
Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
******
Miguel T. (Miguel) argues that the juvenile court erred in
denying his petition seeking to restart juvenile dependency
proceedings that had been ongoing for more than eight years,
based on his allegation that insufficient efforts had been made to
locate him at the outset of those proceedings. Even if we assume
that those efforts fell short, Miguel’s absence from the
proceedings was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because he
is merely an alleged father, because he cannot qualify as a
presumed father, and because the juvenile court’s finding that
offering reunification services to Miguel at this point would not
benefit the child (because it would not be in her best interest) was
not an abuse of discretion. We accordingly affirm.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
I. Facts
A. The family
Monica Q-B. (mother) has three children—C.K. (born 2003),
T.Q. (born 2011), and Anthony B. (born 2014). All three children
have different fathers.1
At the time of T.Q.’s birth, mother was not married to
Miguel and did not live with Miguel. Miguel was not present
when T.Q. was born, and was not listed as T.Q.’s father on T.Q.’s
1 Only T.Q. and Miguel are involved in this appeal.
2
birth certificate. According to mother, T.Q. was the product of a
“onetime sexual encounter” with Miguel, although no DNA test
has been performed to confirm his paternity.
B. Mother’s conduct giving rise to dependency
jurisdiction
On April 6, 2017, at approximately 1:00 a.m., police officers
found C.K. and Anthony B. in a stolen vehicle. The children and
the driver had just left a party together, and the driver was a
friend of mother’s cousin. Anthony B. was not restrained in a car
seat and C.K. was unsecured in the bed of the truck. Mother was
on probation following a felony assault conviction and had
committed multiple probation violations. Her probation officer
recommended that she enroll in an inpatient drug treatment
program. In late April 2017, mother tested positive for
amphetamines and methamphetamine.
II. Procedural Background
A. Initiation of juvenile dependency jurisdiction
On May 10, 2017, the Los Angeles County Department of
Children and Family Services (the Department) filed a petition
asking the juvenile court to exert dependency jurisdiction over all
three of mother’s children due to her substance abuse and
“mental and emotional problems” (namely, a diagnosis of
depression and anxiety), which “endanger the children’s physical
health and safety and places [them] at substantial risk of serious
physical harm, damage, and danger,” thereby warranting the
exercise of dependency jurisdiction under subdivision (b) of
Welfare and Institutions Code section 300.2
2 All further statutory references are to the Welfare and
Institutions Code unless otherwise indicated.
3
B. The Department’s initial attempts to identify
and locate T.Q.’s father
On May 10, 2017, mother informed the Department that
T.Q.’s father was Miguel. She gave them a date of birth for
Miguel in May 1986, but stated she had “not seen [him] in over
six years.” She also reported that he had never held out T.Q. as
his own child or provided any financial support for T.Q.
Prior to the hearing to adjudicate the petition, the
Department in June 2017 conducted a due diligence search to
attempt to locate Miguel. In the report documenting that search,
the Department (incorrectly) indicated that it did not have a date
of birth for Miguel. The Department ran searches through seven
databases using only Miguel’s name; three of them returned a
match for same first and last name, but did not have “identifying
information such as date of birth and social security number for
the Miguel [T.] on file.” The Department was unable to conduct
searches in at least eight databases due to a lack of a date of
birth or social security number. The Department also indicated
that it was unable to write letters to relatives or friends, to
employers, or to parents because it had no contact information for
Miguel. The Department reported it was awaiting results of its
request for a birth certificate for T.Q.
C. Exertion of jurisdiction, removal, and
reunification services
On July 11, 2017, the juvenile court sustained three counts
from a first amended petition—specifically, counts alleging that
(1) mother’s substance abuse renders her incapable of caring for
T.Q. and her siblings, (2) Anthony B.’s father has a history of
substance abuse, and (3) mother and Anthony B.’s father engaged
4
in domestic violence. The court removed T.Q. from mother’s
custody and ordered reunification services.
D. Termination of reunification services
In anticipation of the 12-month review hearing set for
October 2018, the Department conducted another due diligence
search for Miguel. This time, the Department’s report noted the
birthdate mother had reported. But the results of the search
were nearly identical to the first due diligence report.
On October 9, 2018, the juvenile court held the 12-month
review hearing and terminated reunification services for mother.
E. Establishment of guardianship over T.Q.
On May 6, 2019, the juvenile court issued letters of
guardianship placing T.Q. with Tracy S., a non-relative extended
family member, and terminated jurisdiction over T.Q.
Mother appears to have been in contact with Miguel around
this time period, as T.Q. recalled mother FaceTiming Miguel and
he remarked that T.Q. “had [Miguel’s] eyes.”
F. Maternal great aunt’s section 388 petition to
establish a new legal guardianship in her favor
On April 24, 2024, maternal great aunt Norma C. filed a
petition under section 388 asking the juvenile court to place T.Q.
in a guardianship with her on the ground that Norma C. had
custody of T.Q.’s half-sibling, and that it would be best for T.Q. to
be raised with them. That petition listed Miguel as T.Q.’s father
and listed an address for him.
For the first time having Miguel’s contact information, the
Department interviewed him. Miguel confirmed that T.Q. ran
away from Tracy S.’s custody and stayed with him for “several
days” in April 2024. Tracy S. knew “absolutely nothing” about
Miguel’s existence. Miguel’s father indicated that Miguel had
5
never told him that T.Q. was his daughter. Norma C. had known
Miguel for almost 14 years and was unaware he was T.Q.’s father
until early 2024.
On July 8, 2024, the juvenile court granted Norma C.’s
section 388 petition. Miguel failed to enter an appearance or
otherwise make his identity known to the court. Miguel made no
efforts to visit T.Q. since she was placed with Norma C. and did
not call or inquire as to her well-being.
In November 2024, the juvenile court approved legal
guardianship with Norma C. as the permanent plan, and set a
review hearing for May 5, 2025. Miguel failed to enter an
appearance or otherwise make his identity known to the court.
Between the time the juvenile court placed T.Q. with
Norma C. in July 2024 and May 2025, Miguel visited T.Q. only
one time at Thanksgiving. T.Q. stated that Miguel lacked
engagement during visits, spending most of his visits on his
phone, except to ask about mother.
G. Miguel’s section 388 petition
On May 23, 2025, Miguel filed a petition under section 388
seeking to “vacate” the 2017 jurisdictional order and “all”
subsequent “dispositional findings [and] orders relating to” T.Q.
in the intervening eight years on the grounds that the
Department did not “make adequate efforts to give proper notice
of the [juvenile dependency] proceedings” to him, in violation of
due process.
The juvenile court set the matter for a hearing.
At the August 22, 2025, hearing on the petition, Miguel’s
counsel conceded that the Department’s due diligence reports
were “unclear” as to whether the Department failed to use
Miguel’s date of birth when it ran him through various databases
6
or instead that the searches used his date of birth but the results
of those searches “did not [find] a [name and] date of birth that
would correlate to [the] information [the Department] had.”
The court acknowledged that Miguel, even though he was
only an “alleged father,” was “entitled to notice” of the
dependency proceedings. The court went on to find that “proper
notice was given [to Miguel].” The court also found that it was
“not in [T.Q.’s] best interest” to grant the section 388 petition—
and effectively re-set the eight years of dependency proceedings—
in light of Miguel’s failure to appear, his failure to cooperate with
or be interviewed by the Department, and the “little or no
contact” he had with T.Q. “since the filing of this 388” petition.
H. Appeal
Miguel timely filed this appeal.
DISCUSSION
Miguel argues that the juvenile court erred in denying his
section 388 petition. We review the denial of a section 388
motion for an abuse of discretion. (In re Alayah J. (2017) 9
Cal.App.5th 469, 478.)
In this case, Miguel is an alleged father—that is, a man
“who has not established paternity.” (In re G.R. (2024) 106
Cal.App.5th 96, 99.) An alleged father has relatively few rights
in a juvenile dependency proceeding, although one of those rights
is a due process-based right to have the Department “exercise
reasonable diligence to find him” “if [his] whereabouts . . . are
unknown.” (In re A.H. (2022) 84 Cal.App.5th 340, 350.) He has
no right to reunification services, although a juvenile court may
extend those services to him if it “‘determines that the provision
of [those] services will benefit the child.’” (In re Mia M. (2022) 75
Cal.App.5th 792, 806 (Mia M.); § 361.5, subd. (a).)
7
An alleged father may file a section 388 petition as the
vehicle for making a due process challenge based on lack of
notice, including the failure to exercise reasonable diligence to
locate him. (Ansley v. Superior Court (1986) 185 Cal.App.3d 477,
481-488.) Where the Department makes absolutely “no attempt”
to notify an alleged father of a pending dependency proceeding,
that failure may constitute structural error necessitating
automatic reversal (In re Jasmine G. (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th
1109, 1115-1116); but where the Department makes an effort but
that effort is deficient, that deficiency entitles the alleged father
to relief only if his absence from the proceeding is prejudicial (In
re Daniel F. (2021) 64 Cal.App.5th 701, 715-716). “An error in
attempted notice is subject to a harmless beyond a reasonable
doubt standard of prejudice.” (Mia M., supra, 75 Cal.App.5th at
p. 806.)
Because the Department in this case asked mother about
T.Q.’s father, obtained information from mother about Miguel’s
relationship with T.Q., and conducted two due diligence searches
(one using his name and the other using his name and date of
birth), this is not a case where the Department made “no
attempt” to locate Miguel. Because any deficiency in the notice is
not subject to automatic reversal, we need not determine whether
the Department exercised reasonable diligence in trying to find
Miguel; instead, we may assume an absence of reasonable
diligence and then ask: Was Miguel’s absence from the
dependency proceedings harmless beyond a reasonable doubt?
We conclude it was, and do so for two reasons.
First, Miguel made no effort—despite knowing about T.Q.
since at least his 2019 FaceTime conversations with mother—to
establish his status as a presumed father. More to the point,
8
even if he had tried, he could not have prevailed as a matter of
law. Where, as here, the mother is unmarried at the time of the
child’s birth, a man is the “presumed father” only if he has
received the child into his home and openly held the child out as
his own. (Fam. Code, § 7611, subd. (d).) Here, it is undisputed
that Miguel never received T.Q. into his home and never held her
out as his own. Nor did he contact her until she was 13 years old,
ever provide any financial support—or, for that matter, even tell
his own relatives of T.Q.’s existence and his belief that he was her
biological father.
Second, even if we examine Miguel’s rights as an alleged
father, there is also no possibility that the juvenile court would
have exercised its discretion to extend reunification services to
him. Whether to grant those services turns on whether they
would benefit the child. (§ 361.5, subd. (a).) Here, the juvenile
court expressly found that it was not in T.Q.’s best interest to hit
the reset button on these longstanding proceedings, which would
have necessarily included deciding whether to extend Miguel
reunification services as a discretionary matter. The court did
not abuse its discretion in so concluding, as the record indicates
that, even after Miguel became aware of T.Q.’s existence in 2019,
and made himself known in early 2024, he still made little to no
effort to visit T.Q. and was wholly unresponsive to the
Department’s efforts to involve him in the proceedings. It was
not unreasonable for the juvenile court to conclude that it would
not benefit T.Q.—and hence not be in her best interest—to delay
stability and permanency by starting these nine-year-old
proceedings all over again so that an apathetic potential father
9
could be denied reunification services because they would be of no
benefit to T.Q.3
DISPOSITION
The juvenile court’s orders are affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.
______________________, P. J.
HOFFSTADT
I concur:
_________________________, J.
MOOR
3 Because we apply the “benefit” test to assess whether
Miguel would be extended reunification services in the exercise of
the court’s discretion, we are not asking whether granting section
388 relief in this case would be in the “best interest” of T.Q.—a
test that Mia M., supra, 75 Cal.App.5th at pp. 810-811,
disclaimed as inappropriate when a section 388 petition is aimed
at addressing a defect in notice. (Cf. § 388 [asking whether relief
would be in the child’s best interest, as a general matter].)
Whether the juvenile court applied the best interest of the child
standard in denying the 388 petition is of no consequence to our
review.
10
In re T.Q.
B348484
BAKER, J., Concurring
The opinion for the court concludes the notice error
asserted by M.T. is amenable to harmless error analysis and was
indeed harmless. It does not, however, cite In re Christopher L.
(2022) 12 Cal.5th 1063.
I have considered our Supreme Court’s opinion in
Christopher L., and I agree the error asserted by M.T. in this case
is amenable to harmless error analysis. I further agree M.T. has
not demonstrated prejudicial error.
BAKER, J.