Spotlight: Jose Silva

My name is Jose Silva.  I am a fulltime parental defense attorney out of the Fourth District Juvenile Court in Orem Utah.  I am assigned to Judge Noonan's court room.  I have been involved with the juvenile courts for over thirteen years and have been full time with the Utah County Public Defender's Association as a Parental Defense attorney since 2009.

Over the many years working in the juvenile court I have not only learned to love the work but also have become very passionate about parental rights.  With so many judges marching to "save babies" its important to remember and fight for the God given and Constitutional rights of a parent to raise a child as they feel is best, that being the norm and the exception being State involvement.

My most visible case was HUBNER early in my career.  It involved a out of state non custodian father who the State repeatedly failed to locate and serve Notice of the State's involvement with his children.  Only until the mother's right were terminated did the State serve the father with Notice of his TPR trial. His rights were terminated and the Utah Court of Appeals reversed the TPR sighting 13+ due process violations by the State. Not many victories like that in this business.

However, I believe my most successful case was more recent when after shelter hearing and removal of the children, I was able to convince the State to return the children and dismiss their petition entirely, closing the case.  It is always better to cut State involvement at the earliest moment.

My advice to any attorney thinking of practicing in this field would be to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. The less left up to the judges on your cases the better for your clients, generally.