My Appeal Has Officially Been Accepted by the West Virginia Supreme Court — The Fight for Parental R

UPDATE — MY APPEAL HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS OF WEST VIRGINIA

Today, August 21, 2026, I received confirmation that my appeal has officially been accepted for filing by the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

For me, this is much bigger than a court filing.

For nearly two years, I have fought to protect something that I believe should never have required this kind of fight in the first place: the constitutional right of a fit parent to raise her child and make decisions concerning his care, custody, upbringing, safety, and relationships without unjustified government interference.

I am representing myself.

I am not an attorney. I do not have a legal team standing behind me. I have spent countless hours reading statutes, studying court decisions, requesting records and transcripts, documenting what occurred, organizing evidence, and learning an appellate process that most people will thankfully never have to navigate on their own.

And I will not stop.

THIS IS ABOUT MORE THAN GRANDPARENTS

I want to make something very clear.

This fight is not based on the belief that grandparents are unimportant. Grandparents can be an incredibly important part of a child’s life.

This is about something fundamentally different:

When does the government have the constitutional and statutory authority to override a fit parent’s decisions and impose court-ordered grandparent visitation?

And when it does so, what procedures, evidence, findings, and constitutional protections are required?

Those questions matter not only to my family. They matter to parents throughout West Virginia.

PARENTS HAVE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

More than 25 years ago, the United States Supreme Court addressed this very issue in Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000).

The Court recognized that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a parent’s fundamental liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of his or her children.

The Court struck down the visitation order before it because the lower court had failed to give proper weight to the decisions of a fit parent.

That constitutional protection did not disappear when West Virginia enacted a Grandparent Visitation Act.

West Virginia’s own Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that courts considering grandparent visitation cannot simply substitute their judgment for that of a fit parent.

West Virginia precedent requires significant weight to be given to a fit parent’s preference and recognizes that the Grandparent Visitation Act is the exclusive means through which grandparents may seek court-ordered visitation.

The Act itself requires much more than a generalized statement that visitation would be “good for the child.”

A court must determine that visitation is in the child’s best interests AND that it will not substantially interfere with the parent-child relationship.

The Legislature created thirteen statutory factors that courts must consider in making that determination.

AND RECENT WEST VIRGINIA CASE LAW MAKES THESE QUESTIONS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT

In March 2026, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia issued its decision in In re A.E., No. 24-466.

Although the specific issue being appealed in that case was different from mine, the Supreme Court made an important observation concerning grandparents who had been awarded visitation.

The Court explained that simply because individuals receiving visitation are grandparents does not automatically transform the arrangement into visitation under the Grandparent Visitation Act.

The Court specifically noted that the record did not demonstrate consideration of the Act’s thirteen statutory factors or the findings required by the Grandparent Visitation Act.

That decision followed other West Virginia precedent recognizing that the Grandparent Visitation Act is the exclusive legal mechanism through which grandparents seek grandparent visitation.

Those principles matter.

Procedures matter.

Jurisdiction matters.

Required findings matter.

And constitutional rights matter.

THE QUESTION I AM ASKING THE SUPREME COURT TO CONFRONT

Among the issues raised in my appeal is a fundamental question:

Was the underlying grandparent-visitation arrangement legally valid in the first place?

I contend that no petition or motion for grandparent visitation was ever filed by the grandparents before the visitation arrangement was originally imposed.

The original visitation arose from proceedings connected to an abuse-and-neglect case in which I was ultimately not adjudicated as an abusing or neglectful parent.

My child was returned to me.

Yet an ongoing court-ordered grandparent-visitation arrangement followed.

I am now asking the highest court in West Virginia to examine the legal foundation upon which that visitation was created and subsequently modified and expanded.

If the statutory procedure required to establish grandparent visitation was never followed, if the necessary findings were never made, and if the constitutional protections owed to a fit parent were not properly applied, I believe the validity of the resulting order must be confronted.

THIS IS WHY I APPEALED

I am not appealing because I believe parents should always get whatever they want.

I am appealing because constitutional rights mean very little if they exist only on paper.

A fit parent should not have to surrender her constitutional role simply because a judge believes another arrangement might also be beneficial to the child.

There is a legal process for overriding a parent’s decisions.

There are statutes.

There are evidentiary requirements.

There are required findings.

And above all of those things stands the Constitution.

If the government is going to interfere with one of the oldest and most fundamental liberty interests recognized by American law—the relationship between a parent and her child—it must have lawful authority to do so.

I WILL PUT THE RECORD BEFORE THE COURT

My next steps include obtaining the official transcripts and completing the appellate record so that the Supreme Court can see what actually happened.

I intend to rely on the record—not rumors, not assumptions, and not emotion alone.

I will present the orders.

I will present the transcripts.

I will present the procedural history.

I will present the evidence.

And I will ask the Supreme Court to apply the law.

I believe that record will demonstrate that my constitutional parental rights were not afforded the protection the law requires.

Ultimately, however, the Supreme Court—not me—will decide whether reversible constitutional or statutory error occurred and what relief is appropriate.

That distinction matters to me because this fight is about the rule of law.

WHY I AM SHARING THIS PUBLICLY

There are parents who could never afford to fight something like this.

There are parents who would not know where to begin.

There are parents who would look at an order signed by a judge and assume there was nothing they could do—even when they believed something had gone terribly wrong.

I understand that feeling.

I have had moments when this process felt impossible.

But I kept reading.

I kept documenting.

I kept requesting records.

I kept filing.

And today my appeal is before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

I don’t know what the Court ultimately will decide. No litigant does.

But I know what I am going to do.

I am going to prove my case from the record.

I am going to continue advocating for my child.

I am going to continue defending my constitutional rights as his parent.

And I am going to continue speaking about the importance of protecting the rights of fit parents while still recognizing that children can benefit from loving extended families.

Those ideas are not mutually exclusive.

Grandparents can matter deeply.

Parents still have constitutional rights.

Children deserve loving families.

Courts still have to follow the law.

Best interests matter.

So do due process and parental liberty.

And when the State crosses that constitutional line, parents must have a meaningful way to challenge it.

Today, I took another major step in doing exactly that.

My appeal has officially been accepted by the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

I have made it this far without giving up.

And I will not stop now.

Thank you to everyone who has signed, shared, prayed, encouraged me, helped me research, or simply listened.

This fight continues.

For my son.
For parental rights.
For due process.
And for every fit parent who believes the government must be held to the constitutional limits placed upon its power.