M.R. v. R.R.

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STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA
SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS
M.R.,
Petitioner Below, Petitioner
v.) No. 25-816 (Greenbrier County CC-13-2025-D-AP-3)
R.R.,
Respondent Below, Respondent
MEMORANDUM DECISION
The petitioner, M.R., appeals from the Circuit Court of Greenbrier County’s October 20,
2025, order denying his appeal of the family court’s termination of a domestic violence protective
order (“DVPO”). On appeal, the petitioner argues that the family court and circuit court each failed
to acknowledge or address that the DVPO’s entry violated his due process rights.1 Upon our
review, we determine that oral argument is unnecessary and that a memorandum decision
affirming the circuit court’s order is appropriate. See W. Va. R. App. P. 21.
On September 7, 2016, the Family Court of Greenbrier County entered a DVPO against
the petitioner following a hearing at which he “admitted to the facts of [an] incident as described
by the [respondent],” his ex-wife. Per its terms, the DVPO expired on March 6, 2017. However,
on October 19, 2017—for reasons that are unclear from the limited appendix record and without
holding an additional hearing—the family court amended the DVPO to add the couple’s children
as protected parties and extend the order’s enforcement “until further order of the court.”2 Nothing
in the appendix record indicates that the petitioner timely appealed the entry of the amended
DVPO.
1 The petitioner and the respondent are self-represented. Additionally, we use initials where
necessary to protect the identities of those involved in this case. See W. Va. R. App. P. 40(e).
2 The record on appeal includes a December 30, 2024, letter opinion issued by the Augusta
County Circuit Court in Virginia (“the Virginia court”), declining to afford full faith and credit to
the DVPO, as amended. The Virginia court found, among other things, that the family court had
violated the petitioner’s due process rights by failing to provide him with notice or an opportunity
to be heard before entering the amended order. After noting that “there [was] still a lack of clarity
as to much of what took place,” the Virginia court found that the children’s guardian ad litem had
requested the amended DVPO, that the family court’s purported amendment did not appear to
comply with West Virginia law, and that the amended order had been entered—without a hearing—
more than seven months after the original DVPO expired.
FILED
October 14, 2026
C. CASEY FORBES, CLERK
SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS
OF WEST VIRGINIA

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In June 2025, the respondent filed a petition to terminate the DVPO issued in her favor.
Following a hearing in September 2025, which was attended by both parties, the family court
granted the petition. The petitioner, who opposed the DVPO’s termination, promptly appealed this
ruling to the circuit court, which took up the matter at a hearing later that same month.3 After
hearing the parties’ arguments, the circuit court affirmed the family court’s termination of the
DVPO. Noting that the petitioner himself “had previously filed a motion seeking to have [the]
protective order ‘dismissed,’” the circuit court found that he failed to identify any basis upon which
it could conclude that the family court either erred or abused its discretion. This appeal followed.
When reviewing a final order entered by a circuit court upon its review of a family court’s
final order, we review the family court’s findings of fact for clear error, the application of law to
the facts under an abuse of discretion standard, and questions of law de novo. See Syl. Pt. 1, Riffle
v. Riffle, 235 W. Va. 430, 774 S.E.2d 511 (2015) (quoting Syl., Carr v. Hancock, 216 W. Va. 474,
607 S.E.2d 803 (2004)). On appeal, the petitioner does not specify any errors of fact or law
committed by either the family court or the circuit court in terminating the DVPO but, instead,
broadly alleges that these courts ignored the circumstances surrounding the order’s creation and
failed to address its illegality.4 Nor does the petitioner include (or cite to) a record sufficient for
this Court to review the arguments presented to these tribunals. See W. Va. R. App. P. 10(c)(7)
(“The argument must contain appropriate and specific citations to the record on appeal . . . that
pinpoint when and how the issues in the assignments of error were presented to the lower
tribunal.”). Instead, the petitioner argues—without citing any legal authority to support this
assertion—that terminating the DVPO was inappropriate because it should have been “vacated, as
though it never existed.” See id. (explaining that a litigant’s argument must “cit[e] the authorities
relied on”). Due to the various failures in the petitioner’s brief, including his failure to specify any
particular error below, we conclude that he is entitled to no relief. Further, to the extent that the
petitioner requests that this Court now expunge the DVPO (or order that the circuit court do so),
we again note that the petitioner cites to neither any authority providing for such a resolution nor
to any portion of the appendix record in which he sought to have the relevant domestic violence
records purged in accordance with West Virginia Code § 48-27-511.
Upon this record, and for the reasons stated above, we discern no error in the family court’s
termination of the DVPO or in the circuit court’s affirmance of that termination. Accordingly, we
affirm the circuit court’s October 20, 2025, order.
3 The petitioner did not include a transcript of either the family court’s September 2025
hearing or the circuit court’s hearing in the record on appeal.
4 We stress that the order on appeal is the circuit court’s October 20, 2025, affirming the
family court’s termination of the DVPO. To the extent the petitioner attempts to challenge the
underlying 2017 order granting and/or extending the DVPO, the appendix record contains no
evidence that the petitioner timely appealed this order (nor does the petitioner allege that he did
so) or, alternatively, that the petitioner was unaware the order had been entered against him. See
W. Va. Code § 48-27-510. Accordingly, the petitioner is barred from raising here any challenge to
the substance of the amended DVPO.

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Affirmed.
ISSUED: October 14, 2026
CONCURRED IN BY:
Chief Justice C. Haley Bunn
Justice William R. Wooton
Justice Charles S. Trump IV
Justice H. L. Kirkpatrick
Justice James W. Flanigan