08/20/2026
Good decision.
BREAKING🚨 A judge STRIPPED a mother of her son because she couldn't afford Maine's rent on an $800 voucher. Maine's top court just said that was wrong.
The mother, called only "Karen J." in court records, has lived in New Mexico her entire life. Maine's child welfare agency took her son, who has autism and what the court called "exceptionally high needs," and placed him with a foster family in Maine, thousands of miles away, after New Mexico's own child welfare agency refused to keep him in foster care there.
Then Maine handed her a reunification plan. Random drug and alcohol screenings. A neuropsychological evaluation. Substance abuse treatment. Mental health treatment. Counseling. Parenting classes. A domestic violence support group.
She did all of it.
Every random screening came back negative.
She attended many of her son's medical appointments remotely from New Mexico and joined autism organizations there and online.
One requirement was left: move to Maine, indefinitely, so caseworkers could watch her parent in person.
She has a safe, well-maintained apartment in New Mexico paid for with a Section 8 voucher worth $800 a month. She testified the Maine apartments she looked at ran about $1,500. In April 2024 the state flew her out and put her up for two days to find a place. She found nothing.
Transferring the voucher meant losing her New Mexico home permanently, with a Maine waiting list that can take years.
In October 2024, Judge Cynthia Montgomery found she had "gone above and beyond" what the department asked of her, called her inability to move a "refusal to engage in trial placement," and TERMINATED her rights to her child.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court vacated that judgment on Tuesday.
The judge pictured here is Justice Andrew Mead, who wrote that her failure to relocate "was not a willful refusal" but "simply reflected the practical impossibility of compliance," and that moving could have left her "essentially homeless."
Her lawyer, Katelyn Saner, said the decision confirms "that a parent's lack of resources are not a basis to forever terminate the legal bonds between a child and a parent."
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