When Sylvia and Brandon Cunningham got out of jail in North Carolina several years ago, after serving months on drug charges, a judge laid out the steps they needed to take to get their children back from foster care.
After a balky start, they followed through. They got sober and stayed sober. They attended parenting classes and therapy. They got jobs. They showed up for weekly visits with their kids.
Eventually, a judge determined that the Cunninghams had shown they could be good parents and that their house — a tidy trailer at the end of a dirt road — was safe for their children.
But only three of their four children came home.
In 2021, the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled that one of their sons — who was then 5 — was properly placed for adoption on the grounds that the Cunninghams had failed to reimburse the government for some of the cost of their child's foster care.
And in North Carolina, that's reason enough for a court to permanently take away your child.
"It's crazy," Sylvia Cunningham said. "No one understands it."
Added Brandon Cunningham: "I don't understand how we get three of our kids back and that one child is just gone."
North Carolina is one of at least 12 states, according to an NPR survey, in which mothers and fathers can lose the rights to parent their children forever if they don't pay a little-known and controversial debt to the government.
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