Page:Canerday-Banks v. State, 2018 Ark. App. 523.pdf/24

 Circuit Court adoption case by both name and case number; states that it is a response to the Bartons' request for consent to adopt P.S.; and unequivocally provides written reasons for the denial of that consent, the August 11 letter never references the adoption case or the Bartons' request for consent to adopt P.S. and does not in any way indicate that its contents have anything to do with DHS’s prior decision to deny consent to the Bartons' adoption petition. Moreover, the August 11 letter was sent by an entirely different DHS office than the Pope County office responsible for executing the Bankses' consent and denying the Bartons' consent. Additionally, at the hearing neither counsel for DHS nor Victoria Smith ever represented to the circuit court that the maltreatment allegations were a basis on which consent was denied or that the August 11 letter was intended to be a "written reason for withholding consent." Instead, even after admission of the August 11 letter and questioning about the maltreatment allegations, Smith unequivocally testified that DHS’s reason for granting the Bankses' consent while denying the Bartons' request was its preference for the Bankses as family. The CASA report specifically notes that during an August mediation (after the allegations of abuse arose), DHS stated that there was nothing to prevent either party from adopting P.S. It is clear, then, that the true reason for withholding consent to the Bartons' petition was exactly what DHS claimed it was: a preference for the Bankses as biological kin. We cannot manufacture a reason for withholding consent that DHS never asserted.

Even assuming that the August 11 letter was properly before the circuit court as a "written reason for withholding consent," we still could not say that the circuit court erred in its finding of unreasonableness. First, we note that if DHS is deemed to have relied on the