Wis. Stat. § 48.40

This is the official text of Wis. Stat. § 48.40, part of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Statutes — the complete compiled statutory law of Wisconsin, organized into numbered chapters by subject.

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Definitions.

Official statutory text

In this subchapter:

(1) Except as otherwise provided, “agency” means the department, a county department or a licensed child welfare agency.

(1m) “Kinship care provider” means a person receiving payments under s. 48.57 (3m) (am) for providing care and maintenance for a child.

(1r) “Parent” has the meaning given in s. 48.02 (13) , except that for purposes of filing a petition seeking the involuntary termination of parental rights under s. 48.415 to a nonmarital child who is not adopted or whose parents do not subsequently intermarry under s. 767.803 and whose paternity has not been established, of finding grounds under s. 48.415 for the involuntary termination of parental rights to such a child, and of terminating the parental rights to such a child on a ground specified in s. 48.415 , “parent” includes a person who may be the parent of such a child.

(2) “Termination of parental rights” means that, pursuant to a court order, all rights, powers, privileges, immunities, duties and obligations existing between parent and child are permanently severed.

History: 1979 c. 330 ; 1985 a. 176 ; 1995 a. 289 ; 2005 a. 293 ; 2007 a. 96 ; 2023 a. 119 .

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.