"Abandonment" means any conduct by the birth mother, legal father, determined father, outsider father, unknown father or putative father that demonstrates a settled purpose to forego all duties and relinquish all parental claims to the child.
W. Va. Code § 48-22-102
Abandonment defined
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case 227 W. Va. 267 - In Re Carey L.B. (2009)
Most recently applied in In Re ADOPTION OF C.R (May 2014)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: West Virginia Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain West Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.