In re B.P.W

In In re B.P.W., No. 02-05-00288-CV, 2006 WL 2507340 (Tex. App.--Fort Worth Aug. 31, 2006, no pet.), the father committed two burglaries a month before the child was born and committed a theft a few days before the child's birth. Id. He was arrested three days after the child was born, charged with and convicted of the three offenses, and was incarcerated for the first three years of his child's life. Id. His first attempt at parole had been denied when prison authorities found him in possession of gang documents. Id. During the child's first two years, the child's mother also committed several offenses and was incarcerated at the time of the termination trial, and the father could not enunciate a definite plan for the child's care. The Court noted in B.P.W. that the record showed that the father had engaged in a continuing course of crime that spanned from several years to just days before the child's birth, even though he knew that his conduct could result in his incarceration and separation from his child, and that the father then became involved with a gang in prison, which jeopardized his chances for an early parole. Id. Because a child's emotional well-being can be negatively affected when parents repeatedly commit criminal acts that subject them to incarceration that results in their being absent from the child's life and unable to provide support, and because the father's acts created an emotional vacuum in his child's life and subjected the child to ongoing uncertainty regarding who would care for him, we held that the evidence was legally and factually sufficient to support the endangerment finding. Id.