In re N.Z. CA2/2

BACKGROUND

1. The Family Mother and father met when father was 17 years old and mother was 19 years old. They dated for nine or ten years. While together, both used drugs. Son was born in early 2019 and is their only child together.

2 For a few years, mother and father lived with father’s parents (paternal grandparents). Paternal grandmother described mother and father’s relationship as “toxic” and said mother stole from her. On one occasion, before son was born, mother and father engaged in “an intense argument,” both slapped and shoved the other, and father pushed mother out of a car. Both mother and father filed police reports. Father was convicted of domestic battery. At some point after son was born, mother and father lived with a paternal aunt, who believed mother was using marijuana. Father ended his relationship with mother in 2020, when son was about two years old. According to father, he ended the relationship because “mother did not want to stop using meth” and “he did not like the road mother had him going down.” Around the same time, father’s family business failed and mother began taking son to Mexico for extended periods of time to visit her father (maternal…