1. Introduction
In In re W.J., the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia addressed whether parents with previous involuntary terminations of parental rights could be denied an improvement period despite substantial evidence of subsequent rehabilitation. The case also concerned the proper treatment of lawful medication-assisted treatment (“MAT”) when a newborn experiences withdrawal following prenatal exposure to prescribed medication.
The petitioners, H.S., the mother, and J.J., the father, challenged an order denying post-adjudicatory improvement periods, terminating their parental rights to W.J., and prohibiting contact. The West Virginia Department of Human Services (“DHS”) and the child’s guardian ad litem defended that disposition.
The court concluded that the circuit court had improperly discounted evidence of recovery, relied excessively on earlier terminations, and displayed disapproval of medically supervised MAT inconsistent with established state policy. On this record, the parents demonstrated that they were likely to participate fully in an improvement period, and no evidence showed that a properly structured opportunity for rehabilitation would jeopardize W.J.’s best interests.
The decision applies existing law rather than announcing an entirely new doctrine. Issued as a memorandum decision because it presented no substantial question of law, its central significance is its insistence on an individualized, evidence-based assessment of present parental rehabilitation.
2. Background and Procedural History
Earlier proceedings and subsequent treatment
The mother previously lost parental rights to four children; the father was the biological parent of two of those children. Illicit substance use was a principal factor in the earlier proceedings. Both parents acknowledged that they had previously refused to recognize their addiction and had failed to take available improvement opportunities seriously.
According to their dispositional testimony, those losses prompted them to enter a voluntary MAT program in 2020. Their treatment included prescribed buprenorphine, counseling, random drug testing, and pill counts. They also maintained employment and presented evidence of safe and suitable housing.
W.J.’s birth and removal
After W.J.’s birth in January 2025, testing detected buprenorphine in the mother and the child’s umbilical cord. W.J. experienced withdrawal symptoms, required methadone treatment, and initially needed tube-feeding. DHS filed an abuse and neglect petition, and the child was removed on an emergency basis.
The petition also relied on a positive cannabis screen during the pregnancy. The parents testified that their marijuana use followed a miscarriage and ceased immediately when they learned that the mother was approximately five months pregnant with W.J. DHS presented no contrary evidence showing continued cannabis use afterward.
Medical evidence and adjudication
The mother testified that she disclosed her treatment and substance-use history to her obstetrician, who advised her to continue buprenorphine because withdrawal could be dangerous. A letter from the obstetrician confirmed awareness of the prescribed treatment. The circuit court accepted that the prescription was lawful but refused to find that the mother continued treatment following consultation with, and at the direction of, her obstetrician.
At adjudication, the parents admitted the petition’s allegations and requested improvement periods and admission to family treatment court. DHS counsel did not oppose those requests at the hearing, although a contemporaneous multidisciplinary team report recommended against them. The circuit court adjudicated the parents as abusing and neglecting and denied the requested opportunities.
Disposition and appeal
At disposition, the parents presented evidence of treatment compliance, employment, housing, parenting classes, and efforts to obtain information about W.J.’s condition. The CPS worker confirmed participation in services but recommended termination, expressing concern that future stress could trigger renewed substance use.
The circuit court terminated parental rights, emphasizing the previous terminations, the child’s suffering, and the mother’s prenatal substance exposure. It reasoned that the lawful prescription did not change the fact that the child had suffered. It also found that reasonable reunification efforts were unnecessary and that the conditions of abuse and neglect could not be substantially corrected in the near future.
The parents appealed only the disposition. Because they did not challenge adjudication, the Supreme Court did not decide whether the mother’s lawful, medically supervised MAT use properly supported an initial finding of abuse or neglect.
3. Summary of the Decision
The Supreme Court unanimously concluded that denying improvement periods was an abuse of discretion. Its principal findings were:
- The parents had demonstrated substantial, sustained changes since the earlier proceedings, including successful participation in MAT.
- The circuit court improperly discounted medical evidence and the mother’s uncontroverted testimony concerning her obstetrician’s advice.
- Disapproval of appropriate MAT conflicted with existing precedent and legislative policy.
- The finding that the mother used marijuana throughout the first five months of pregnancy lacked evidentiary support.
- Previous involuntary terminations did not eliminate the need to evaluate current rehabilitation and the likelihood of participation.
- No evidence established that a suitably structured improvement period would jeopardize W.J.’s best interests.
The court vacated the termination of parental rights, reversed the denial of improvement periods, and remanded for further proceedings. It directed the circuit court, in consultation with the multidisciplinary treatment team, to establish conditions that would protect W.J., minimize disruption, and give the parents a genuine opportunity to demonstrate fitness.
The decision did not order immediate reunification, award immediate custody, or expressly require admission to family treatment court. Recognizing that W.J. had spent almost two years in the current placement without parental contact, the court left the protective details of the improvement periods to the circuit court’s discretion.
4. Analysis
A. Precedents Cited and Their Influence
In re B.S., M.G., and T.J.
This earlier memorandum decision affirmed termination of the mother’s parental rights to three older children. It identified continued controlled-substance abuse, failure to complete rehabilitation, and failure to secure employment or suitable housing. Its role here was primarily historical: it established the seriousness of the earlier deficiencies against which subsequent changes had to be assessed.
The important contrast was between the mother’s earlier failure to engage meaningfully in rehabilitation and the present evidence of treatment participation, employment, and housing. The earlier decision supported scrutiny, not an automatic conclusion that rehabilitation remained impossible.
In re K.S.
The court relied on syllabus point 1 of this decision for the governing appellate framework. Substantive decisions, including termination, receive abuse-of-discretion review; supporting factual findings receive clear-error review; and legal questions receive de novo review.
That framework permitted the court to distinguish unsupported factual findings—such as the asserted duration of marijuana use—from the broader discretionary error of denying improvement periods despite the rehabilitation evidence.
In re K.A., J.R., N.A. & J.B.
This decision specifically establishes abuse-of-discretion review for granting or denying a post-adjudicatory improvement period. It confirms that trial courts have substantial discretion, but that discretion must rest on a proper assessment of the evidence and governing law. Here, the circuit court’s treatment of MAT and its failure to credit demonstrated progress crossed that boundary.
In re M.M.
This was the central authority concerning MAT. The court invoked two syllabus points:
- Syllabus point 5: Bias against MAT, when appropriate and potentially beneficial, contradicts West Virginia’s legislatively expressed public policy.
- Syllabus point 4: A court may not terminate parental rights solely because a parent participates in a regulated MAT program while successfully fulfilling treatment obligations.
These principles prevented the circuit court from treating lawful treatment itself as proof that the parents had failed to change. The decision does not establish immunity from child-protection intervention for a parent receiving MAT. It requires courts to distinguish successful treatment from the illicit substance abuse that treatment addresses.
In re J.B.
In this memorandum decision, adjudicatory and termination orders were vacated where DHS failed to prove that the mother knew or should have known of her pregnancy when she used controlled substances; the evidence showed that she learned of the pregnancy only upon delivery.
The court used that reasoning to support its criticism of the weight assigned to cannabis use before the mother knew she was pregnant. The procedural distinction matters: unlike in In re J.B., adjudication was not under review here. The citation informed the disposition analysis rather than reopening the parents’ admissions.
In re S.S.
This decision supplied the conceptual purpose of an improvement period: an opportunity for a parent to change behavior and correct the charged conditions of abuse or neglect. It also explained that child welfare and parental rehabilitation are not necessarily competing objectives; rehabilitation can facilitate reunification when reunification serves the child’s interests.
The court relied on this framework both to require meaningful consideration of the parents’ progress and to direct a carefully tailored remand that would accommodate W.J.’s safety and established placement.
In re Rebecca K.C.
This authority directly answered the circuit court’s reliance on prior terminations. It emphasizes that a previous termination does not mean a parent lacks a right to “another chance,” whether through an improvement period or otherwise.
That principle does not guarantee every parent another improvement period. It rejects a categorical bar and requires attention to evidence that the earlier problems have been remedied. The parents’ years of treatment and improved circumstances made that distinction decisive here.
In re L.M.
Quoted through In re S.S., this decision identifies the child’s best interests as the “polar star” in cases involving children. It ensured that the analysis did not become exclusively focused on rewarding parental progress. The court acknowledged W.J.’s suffering and prolonged placement, while finding no evidence that a protective improvement period would jeopardize the child.
State ex rel. Amy M. v. Kaufman
Also quoted through In re S.S., this decision explains that improvement periods seek to facilitate family reunification whenever reunification serves the children’s best interests. It supported the court’s conclusion that rehabilitation deserves genuine consideration rather than dismissal based solely on parental history.
B. Legal Reasoning
The statutory question concerned likely participation, not guaranteed success
Under West Virginia Code § 49-4-610(2)(B), an adjudicated parent seeking an improvement period must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that the parent is likely to participate fully. The statute does not require proof that reunification will certainly succeed.
The parents’ conduct supplied more than promises: they had voluntarily engaged in treatment for approximately five years, complied with monitoring and counseling, maintained employment, and participated in services. The Supreme Court found that this record satisfied the relevant participation inquiry. Its conclusion was case-specific; it did not eliminate the statutory burden or make improvement periods automatic.
Lawful MAT could not be treated as equivalent to continuing illicit drug abuse
West Virginia Code § 49-4-604(f) prohibits termination solely because a parent successfully participates in a regulated MAT program. Together with In re M.M., that provision required a distinction between treatment compliance and unresolved addiction-related misconduct.
The circuit court emphasized that a prescription did not erase W.J.’s suffering. The Supreme Court did not dispute the seriousness of that suffering. It rejected the further inference that the parents’ continued treatment necessarily demonstrated unchanged parental unfitness or justified denying rehabilitation.
The medical evidence was especially important. Although the obstetrician’s letter confirmed awareness rather than expressly recording an instruction to continue treatment, the mother also testified that the physician advised continuation. The court found error in refusing to recognize that consultation and advice. It additionally cited a regulation requiring pregnant patients who elect to withdraw against medical advice to be informed of withdrawal risks and effects on pregnancy.
The cannabis findings exceeded the evidence
The circuit court gave substantial weight to supposed marijuana use throughout the first five months of pregnancy. The Supreme Court found that characterization unsupported. The record established a positive screen and admitted use, but not continuous use over that entire period.
The evidence also showed cessation upon discovery of the pregnancy and no subsequent positive screens for cannabis or other nonprescribed drugs. The court therefore required a more accurate evaluation of both the lapse and the parents’ response to it, rather than treating the lapse as proof that their overall recovery efforts were meaningless.
Prior terminations were relevant history, not a conclusive prediction
DHS and the guardian invoked West Virginia Code § 49-4-604(c)(7)(A) and (C), arguing that aggravated circumstances and previous involuntary terminations relieved DHS of reasonable-efforts obligations. They also contended that the parents had not remedied the earlier problems.
The court rejected that latter characterization of the evidence. Its reasoning distinguishes the question whether DHS must undertake reasonable reunification efforts from the question whether these parents demonstrated grounds for an improvement period. A statutory exception concerning reasonable efforts did not make the evidence of present rehabilitation irrelevant.
The decision did not comprehensively redefine the reasonable-efforts exceptions or independently resolve every asserted aggravated-circumstances theory. Its operative conclusion was narrower: the circuit court could not properly deny improvement periods on this record.
Best interests required a forward-looking, individualized assessment
The circuit court viewed another opportunity as a “blind gamble.” The Supreme Court instead found a substantial evidentiary basis for expecting participation. The CPS worker’s concern that stress might produce relapse did not overcome the demonstrated progress, particularly where no evidence showed that a suitably controlled improvement period would endanger W.J.
This did not transfer the parents’ statutory burden to DHS. It explained why the parents’ affirmative evidence, considered together with the absence of demonstrated jeopardy, made denial an abuse of discretion.
The remedy preserved protection without prejudging reunification
The remand carefully separated an opportunity to demonstrate fitness from a finding that fitness had already been established. The circuit court retained discretion over the improvement periods’ terms, working with the multidisciplinary team to protect W.J. and minimize disruption.
The immediate issuance of the mandate underscored the need to begin those proceedings promptly after an extended period of separation. The appellate court did not itself prescribe a contact schedule or decide the eventual custody outcome.
C. Potential Impact
- More individualized dispositional findings: Courts should identify current deficiencies and evaluate evidence of change rather than treating earlier terminations as permanently determinative.
- Closer attention to medical evidence: MAT-related cases require assessment of lawful prescribing, compliance, counseling, and medical advice—not assumptions that continued medication necessarily means continued parental dysfunction.
- Greater precision concerning prenatal exposure: Courts should distinguish prescribed medication from illicit use and supported findings from assumptions about duration, knowledge, or continued conduct.
- Meaningful scrutiny of relapse predictions: General concerns about possible future stress must be evaluated alongside the parent’s actual treatment history and present functioning.
- Child-centered remand planning: Even when denial of an improvement period is reversed, established placements and lengthy separations remain important in designing safe conditions.
The decision’s reach remains limited. It does not hold that MAT can never be relevant to child welfare, that prenatal exposure can never support adjudication, or that prior terminations are unimportant. Nor does it establish a minimum treatment duration that automatically entitles a parent to an improvement period. It requires a sound assessment of the particular record under existing statutory and precedential standards.