Commentary
In March, West Virginia passed legislation entrenching a “rebuttable presumption” that, following separation, parents will enjoy equal time with their child(ren). That is, in the absence of reasonably suspected child jeopardy, judges will no longer award “custody” to either parent. Equal shared “parenting” (ESP) will be the norm. West Virginia joins Arizona (2013), Kentucky (2018), and Arkansas (2021) in arriving at this enlightened, long-overdue solution to the inherent deficits of the traditional winner-takes-all system.
