Teen tries to cut ties with convicted dad

Massachusetts officials are trying to help the boy in his effort.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
SANDOWN, N.H. -- Patrick Holland was 8 when he found his mother dead on her bedroom floor. Elizabeth Holland had been shot eight times and beaten so savagely with the gun that the wooden handle shattered.
The killer was Patrick's father, Daniel Holland.
Now 14 years old, Patrick Holland is trying to cut off all ties -- legal as well as emotional -- with the man who murdered his mother.
"He is not my father anymore," Patrick said.
Today, a Massachusetts judge will hear Patrick's petition to terminate his father's parental rights. State social-service officials have joined with Patrick to ask the court to end Daniel Holland's role as a father.
Legal experts said they did not know of another case like it.
A Florida teenager living with a foster family made headlines 10 years ago when he tried unsuccessfully to sever ties with his birth parents.
Still his legal father
But the Holland case involves a child with only one living parent: a man who kept his legal status as a father despite being convicted of killing the boy's mother. Although he is serving a life sentence in a central Massachusetts prison, Daniel Holland remains Patrick's legal father and could attempt to influence his son's life.
That is exactly what happened three years ago, when Daniel Holland asked state authorities about his son's welfare. Months passed while Patrick's guardians tried in vain to block his involvement.
The episode caused Patrick "some emotional havoc," according to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. Patrick wanted to sever his ties with his father as soon as possible. But his petition slogged through two years and five continuances before today's hearing was scheduled.
"I would have done this a lot earlier if I could have," said Patrick, who hasn't seen his father since his mother's death.
Expert's comments
Patrick Holland's case stands out, according to University of Southern California law Professor Tom Lyon, because "it is very unusual for a child to take this kind of action."
Lyon, an expert on family law, said courts occasionally terminate parental rights when a mother or father is killed by a spouse or lover. But these cases generally involve younger children, he said, and the action typically is brought by a social-service agency on behalf of the child.
Many of the three or more women killed each day in the United States by husbands or boyfriends leave children behind. When these men are imprisoned, they often fail to express interest in their children, Lyon said, causing "de facto termination of parental rights. The father is out of the child's life."
Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, also a family-law specialist, said some imprisoned fathers, however, "suddenly get very parental," thinking that cleaning up their images may get them of prison.
"It makes them look like they have been rehabilitated," she said.
What's really unusual in this case, she said, "is for a kid to get standing to do anything. Normally, kids are considered not to have rights. I think what is really outrageous is that in this case there is no system in place to terminate parental rights."