Background
In February 2023, the West Virginia Department of Human Services filed an abuse and neglect petition against Petitioner Mother A.B. after receiving referrals concerning her three children — M.G., S.G., and O.G. The petition alleged, among other things, that the mother broke down S.G.’s bedroom door while threatening her with a spiked baseball bat, mocked S.G.’s self-harming feelings, called the children derogatory names including racial slurs, and threw objects at M.G. The children were placed with their non-offending father. Following adjudicatory hearings in July 2023, the Circuit Court of Berkeley County found the mother had engaged in verbal and emotional abuse and domestic violence against the children. However, the adjudicatory order also included findings — that the mother failed to provide for the children’s basic needs, used excessive corporal punishment, and demonstrated a pattern of physical abuse — that all parties on appeal agreed were not supported by the record.
The circuit court granted the mother a post-adjudicatory improvement period. At dispositional hearings in November 2024, the evidence showed that despite technical compliance with improvement period requirements, the mother continued to minimize her conduct, blamed the children’s father for her behavior, and never acknowledged her role in the domestic violence against the children. Unsupervised visits had been revoked after children reported feeling uncomfortable. In December 2024, the circuit court terminated the mother’s custodial and guardianship rights — but not her underlying parental rights — finding no reasonable likelihood that the conditions of abuse could be substantially corrected in the near future. The mother appealed both the adjudicatory and dispositional orders.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed the dispositional order, finding no abuse of discretion in terminating the mother’s custodial and guardianship rights. The court held that the mother’s persistent failure to acknowledge the domestic violence she committed against the children — including the door-busting incident and threat with the spiked bat — rendered the conditions of abuse untreatable. Mere technical compliance with improvement period requirements cannot substitute for genuine acknowledgment of the abuse, and the best interests of the children remained the controlling standard for any dispositional decision.
On the adjudication appeal, the court agreed with all parties that certain findings in the August 2023 adjudicatory order — specifically, that the mother failed to provide basic needs, used excessive corporal punishment, and engaged in a pattern of physical abuse — were clearly erroneous and not supported by the record. The court vacated those portions and remanded with instructions to enter a corrected order, while affirming the supported findings of verbal, emotional, and domestic violence abuse.
The court also addressed a statutory interpretation question of first impression: whether West Virginia Code § 49-4-604(c)(6), which authorizes termination of “parental, custodial and guardianship rights,” permits a court to terminate only custodial and/or guardianship rights while leaving parental rights intact. The court held that it does, reading “and” in the statute as “or” given the context, the legislative purpose of least-restrictive dispositions, and the absurd results that would follow from a strictly conjunctive reading. The court noted that adopting the mother’s interpretation would prevent courts from terminating partial rights held by guardians or custodians who never possessed full parental rights.
Key Takeaways
- A parent’s failure to acknowledge the basic facts of their abuse — not just formal non-compliance with an improvement period — can independently support termination of custodial and guardianship rights under W. Va. Code § 49-4-604(c)(6).
- Technical completion of an improvement period is insufficient where the parent fails to demonstrate genuine insight or a meaningful change in overall attitude toward parenting.
- West Virginia Code § 49-4-604(c)(6) permits a circuit court to terminate a respondent’s custodial and/or guardianship rights while leaving parental rights intact; “and” in the statute is construed disjunctively to avoid absurd results and to honor the least-restrictive-alternative mandate.
- Adjudicatory orders must be based solely on findings supported by the record; clearly erroneous findings will be vacated and remanded for correction even where the overall adjudication is affirmed, particularly because those findings carry forward to future modification proceedings.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies the scope of a West Virginia circuit court’s dispositional toolkit in abuse and neglect cases. By confirming that § 49-4-604(c)(6) authorizes termination of custodial or guardianship rights alone — without also terminating parental rights — the court gives circuit judges a meaningful intermediate option when full termination of parental rights is not warranted but returning children to a parent’s custody is unsafe. This is especially significant where, as here, the children are already thriving in a non-offending parent’s custody and the abusing parent retains a potential path to modification if circumstances genuinely change.
The decision also reinforces that accuracy in adjudicatory orders matters beyond the moment of adjudication. Because a partial disposition (custodial termination only) leaves open future modification proceedings, the court emphasized that the adjudicatory findings must correctly reflect only what the evidence actually proved — erroneous findings of physical abuse or neglect of basic needs can unfairly skew future proceedings and must be excised. Practitioners in West Virginia child-welfare cases should note both the procedural importance of promptly objecting to unsupported adjudicatory findings and the substantive lesson that genuine acknowledgment of abuse is a prerequisite to demonstrating the improvement necessary to avoid termination.