Mediation in West Virginia

When mediation is required

W. Va. Code 48-9-202(a) lists mediation, or other nonjudicial procedures designed to help parents reach an agreement, among the court-ordered services available in a parenting plan dispute. Subsection (a)(3) makes this concrete. If the parents cannot resolve their issues and agree on a parenting plan, the court must require mediation. The one exception is when procedural rules adopted by the Supreme Court of Appeals show that mediation is not appropriate for that specific case.

Domestic violence and safety screening

Under subsection (b), the Supreme Court of Appeals must make and promulgate rules for premediation screening. Those rules check whether domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, threats or acts of duress or coercion, substance abuse, mental illness, or similar factors would hurt a party's safety. They also check a party's ability to meaningfully participate in mediation, or capacity to freely and voluntarily consent to any agreement reached.

Those rules must let a family court judge consider alternatives to mediation that could still help the parties build a parenting plan. The statute specifically bars those rules from creating an automatic bar to mediation just because domestic violence, abuse, duress, substance abuse, or mental illness is present. Instead, those factors can be grounds for the court, using its discretion, to decide not to order mediation at all, or to excuse a parent from meeting face-to-face with the other parent during the process.

What a mediator can and cannot tell the court

Subsection (c) bars a West Virginia mediator from making a recommendation to the court. The mediator also cannot reveal information either parent disclosed during mediation under a reasonable expectation of confidentiality. There is one exception: a mediator may tell the court credible information about domestic violence or child abuse, even if it came up during a confidential mediation session.

Cost of court-ordered mediation

Under subsection (d), mediation services ordered under this statute must be billed at an hourly cost that is reasonable given each parent's financial circumstances. That cost is assessed on a uniform sliding scale. If one parent can afford it significantly more than the other, the court can order that parent to pay some or all of the other parent's share. State revenues generally cannot be used to cover mediator costs directly. But the Supreme Court of Appeals may use part of its own budget for administrative costs of running mediation programs. Grants or gifts earmarked for mediation do not count as state revenue for this purpose.

Mediator qualifications

Subsection (e) puts responsibility for setting mediator standards on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. It must establish standards for the qualification and training of mediators who handle these parenting plan cases. The statute delegates the specifics to the court system rather than spelling them out itself. So the exact training hours and credentialing requirements are set through the court's own rules, not the underlying statute.