can dhs(iowa) break a court order(district)?

Question

order says the children can't have overnight visits with non-costodial parent! the kids r in foster and DHS is trying to go over the court order without the kids being adjudicated!

Answer 1

Without knowing more about the situation, this is hard to answer.

My opinion is that we're looking at two different situations that are not necessarily conflicting. The children are in foster care. This means that either a court or DHS has determined that they were in danger in their previous living arrangements or that some situation exists where they could be neglected or endangered.

Then there's the court order about the non-custodial parent not have overnight visits with the children. This is probably the result of a hearing where there was sufficient proof for the judge to decide that the children would somehow be endangered by such a visit.

Foster "parents" are not the same thing as custodial/non-custodial parents. I don't think there's a jurisdictional conflict here; merely one of definition. If you're the parent who's been served with the court order, you probably won't be able to convince anyone of your point until your behavior has changed to convince DHS and the courts that the children would not be endangered when in your presence and unsupervised.

Again, this is merely an opinion based on meager knowledge of family law in Iowa.