MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An Alabama lawmaker has filed a bill that would allow circuit and district courts to remove children from seemingly unsafe situations under certain circumstances.
Currently, juvenile courts can issue ex-parte orders to protect minors from harm or abuse. HB 54, sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, would permit circuit and district court judges to issue them in cases of specific findings of abuse or neglect “pending all petitions for divorce or legal separation, or other actions seeking modification, interpretation, or enforcement of a final decree.”
“It would be removing them from an unsafe situation and putting them with other guardians, or finding the best home for just a certain period of time until their investigation can be done,” he said in a Thursday phone interview. “Basically, it’s preventative to make sure that nothing happens while they’re trying to find a place to put them.”
Simpson said the bill came from a case with Mobile County Circuit Court Judge Walter Honeycutt where he had a domestic relations case that he could not remove children from.
In a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee meeting in March, Honeycutt discussed a domestic case in September 2023 where a situation seemed unsafe for children. He had no authority to remove the children in that scenario.
According to a Fox 10 News report, the Mobile County Sheriff said evidence indicated that a woman killed her 5-year-old and 2-year-old last September.
“Here I am a divorce judge,” he told the committee. “My choice is to give either mother the custody or the father the custody. I can’t do either one. I can’t order DHR to go get those children, because I don’t have jurisdiction. Only the juvenile court can do that.”
A message was left with Honeycutt’s chamber Friday.
Under the legislation, the order would remain in effect until the juvenile court conducts a hearing on a petition filed by a relative, the local county human resources department or by the court that issued the order. The juvenile court can ratify the order or issue their own.
“Please do something,” Honeycutt said at the March meeting. “Please give me jurisdiction. Please do something to where, if this scenario ever happens again, a judge such as myself can say, ‘Please, somebody grab these children before somebody, something happens.’”
Simpson said he worked with the Department of Human Resources on the draft last session. Simpson filed a similar bill in the legislative session earlier this year that did not pass.
“We worked with DHR,” he said. “We worked with everyone involved in the court system to make sure that this specific is limited to emergency situations at the request of the judge to have DHR come in and do an emergency evaluation, and the child is protected during that period, and it’s for short periods.”
A message was left with DHR Friday morning.
“(Honeycutt) felt he didn’t have the authority to do anything, to order anything to be done, that mother left that hearing that evening, and after court was over, she went home, she killed herself, and she killed her children,” Simpson said. “And so Judge Honeycutt has wanted this, and this is something he’s pressed for to make sure that judges have the ability to enter an order in the emergency situations to protect the children.”
The Alabama Legislature will return for its 2025 regular session in February.
This article originally appeared in the Alabama Reflector, an independent, nonprofit news outlet. It appears on FOX54.com under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
