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W. Va. Code § 48-9-102

Objectives; best interests of the child

Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case 225 W. Va. 317 - Storrie v. Simmons (2010)

Most recently applied in James v. Faust (September 2016)

How often courts cite this section

20092010201630
citing decisions per year

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.

(a) The primary objective of this article is to serve the child’s best interests by facilitating:

(1) Stability of the child;

(2) Collaborative parental planning and agreement about the child’s custodial arrangements and upbringing;

(3) Continuity of existing parent-child attachments;

(4) Meaningful contact between a child and each parent, and which is rebuttably presumed to be equal (50-50) custodial allocation of the child;

(5) Caretaking and parenting relationships by adults who love the child, know how to provide for the child’s needs, and who place a high priority on doing so;

(6) Security from exposure to physical or emotional harm;

(7) Expeditious, predictable decisionmaking and avoidance of prolonged uncertainty respecting arrangements for the child’s care and control; and

(8) Meaningful contact between a child and his or her siblings, including half-siblings.

(b) A secondary objective of this article is to achieve fairness between the parents consistent with the rebuttable presumption of equal (50-50) custodial allocation.

Official source: West Virginia Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain West Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.