HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 9
(By Delegates Craig, Amores, Armstead, Azinger,
DeLong, Ellem, Pethtel and Webster)
Urging the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to design and
implement a process of data collection on the children and
families involved in divorce and child custody matters decided
by the family law courts of this state.
Whereas, In 2001 the West Virginia Legislature enacted sweeping
changes to child custody laws of the State;
Whereas, Those changes were in large part reflective of the
American Law Institute's model legislation developed to provide
determinate and predictable outcomes that benefit children in the
vast majority of cases without imposing standardized solutions that
offend society's commitment to pluralism and parental autonomy.
Whereas, Prior to the reforms initiated by the Legislature in
2001, the courts of West Virginia decided custody issues under the
best-interests-of-the-child test, despite wide-spread recognition
that the test made results difficult to predict, thus encouraging
unnecessary litigation, the hiring of expensive experts, and
strategic or manipulative behavior by parents.
Whereas, The approach enacted by the Legislature in 2001
requires post-separation allocations of residential responsibility to each parent that approximate the proportion of care-taking each
parent assumed before the separation. In focusing on past care-
taking patterns, this approach derives what is best for a
particular child not from the experience of families in the
aggregate, or from some state ideal of the divorced family, but
from the experience of the individual child's own family.
Whereas, In 2006, the Legislature resolved in
House Concurrent
Resolution 55 to review the comprehensive legislative changes in
divorce and custody laws enacted in 2001, and determine whether
additional reforms are necessary.
Whereas, During the 2006 interim meetings, a subcommittee of
the Joint Committee on the Judiciary undertook such a study of the
state's current divorce and custody laws.
Whereas, That study reviewed information prepared by the West
Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals regarding the number and types of
family law cases decided by the courts in the previous year.
Unfortunately, the data provides little or no information on the
personal characteristics of parents, types of custody arrangements
agreed upon by parents or imposed by the courts, family composition
(e.g., age and sex of the children), the socio-economic status of
the family, and the amount of parental co-operation.
Whereas, To truly determine whether additional legislative
reforms are necessary and appropriate, additional data on the
families participating in matters of child custody before the state's family courts is essential; therefore, be it
Resolved by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That the Legislature hereby urges
the West Virginia Supreme
Court of Appeals to develop and implement additional data
collection tools for divorce and child custody cases decided by the
family law courts of this state for the purpose of providing the
Legislature with relevant information to be considered in
determining whether further legislative changes to the state's
divorce and custody laws are necessary and appropriate.
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