De Facto Parent Status

What do you mean by de facto parent? NJ recognizes "psychological parents" but not in cases where a child was involuntarily put in foster care. NJ also allows a foster parent who has cared for a child continuously for 15 mos or more to apply to adopt the child if the child is eligible for adoption (meaning parental rights have already been terminated). Foster parents in NJ have the right to be heard at hearings and be notified of court hearings but they are not parties to the case. As far as "intervening" in a case (as a party), the court rules allow any third party to intervene in a case at the Judge's discretion if the judge finds that a party has information the court needs to know. However, due to the fact that foster parents ALREADY are included in the court proceedings (by being notified and having a right to be heard), there is no reason for a judge to allow a foster parent to intervene. Foster parents can't maintain a separate action relating to custody of a child when a DYFS action is ongoing. Not sure if any of this helps...

I am confused by this because our kids were involuntarily put in foster care (sort of) and the law guardian mentioned the "psychological parent" argument could be used in favor of a child staying with us versus being reunified with a fairly absent birth parent. Is this incorrect? Also, once TPR happens who do we need to go to in order to "apply" to adopt the child, or will DYFS point us in that direction?

Yes and no. There are two totally separate things in NJ involving "psychological parents." The first thing (I will call it the psychological parent law) is not applicable to most foster parent situations (where DYFS takes the child into custody and places the child with a foster parent). The second thing (I will call it the bonding evaluation) often uses the term "psychological parent" in the reports written by experts regarding the child. The bonding evaluation can help DYFS terminate parental rights because the bonding evaluation says that the foster parents have become the child's psychological parents and it would harm the child to be separated from the foster parents. The biggest difference between the two things is that the psychological parent law gives the people who have been caring for the child the right to file directly with the court to keep the child. The psychological parents have legal rights similar to the biological parents. Foster parents don't have the legal rights that psychological parents have, ever. It's confusing because the bonding evaluation uses the words "psychological parents" in the report and everyone refers to the foster parents as psychological parents (even the court) but everyone is talking about the bonding evaluation, not the pychological parent law. Below is the legal test for the psychological parent law and because of the requirement of #1, I can't imagine how it could apply to any DYFS-involved situation (it mostly applies to situations where someone has a baby, dumps the baby off on grandma or an aunt or uncle or someone, and then returns much later to "take" the child from the only parent the child has ever known - the key is that the bio parent is the one who left the child with the caregiver): In order to determine whether a party is a psychological parent, a party must establish: (1) the legal parent must consent to and foster the relationship between the third party and the child; (2) the third party must have lived with the child; (3) the third party must perform parental functions for the child to a significant degree; and (4) most important, a parent-child bond must be forged. And yes, I believe DYFS will point you in the adoption direction once TPR has taken place.