LMFT Licensure in West Virginia: Requirements, Hours and Exams

West Virginia issues two licenses: the provisional license and the Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist license.

The Board issues the provisional license only after the academic requirements and the required exam are met, and it must be in hand before any supervisory experience begins.

A provisional licensee may not operate a private practice or work a contract labor position, and supervision must be continuous: an interruption of more than six weeks must be reported to the Board in writing within 30 days.

The Board must be notified in writing of any change of supervisor or job position and must approve the change before it happens; if that approval is not obtained, the hours accrued between the termination of one supervisor or job and the approval of the next are void.

The license runs 36 months, renewable once for 24 more.

One more clock: “Documentation more than three (3) years or older, to include supervision, shall not be considered towards current licensing efforts” (27-8-3.7) — ask the Board how it applies to hours logged early in a long provisional term.

The degree is a master's or doctorate from a program accredited by COAMFTE, CACREP, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, or a comparable accrediting body as determined by the Board, with a minimum of 60 semester hours or 90 quarter hours of graduate course work.

The coursework must include at least one three-hour graduate course in each of eight areas — marriage and family studies, systems theory, research, professional ethics, human growth and development, appraisal of individuals and families, etiology through prevention, and practicum — plus four courses in marriage and family therapy.

The practicum itself is a minimum of twelve months of supervised clinical work with three hundred hours of direct contact with individuals, couples and/or families, and fifty percent of those three hundred hours must be with couples and families present.

A different mental-health graduate degree with the same hour total can qualify with written evidence that it meets equivalent standards, and the Board's credentialing committee makes the final call on sufficiency.

The base rule asks a minimum of 3,000 hours of supervised marriage and family therapy experience after a master's degree; a doctoral degree cuts the minimum to 1,500 hours after the degree.

The master's hours must be earned in not less than two years and the doctoral hours in not less than one year, and the Board may not credit more than 1,500 hours in any twelve-month period — the annual cap is what makes the two-year floor bind on a 3,000-hour plan.

Up to 600 hours of credit can come from master's-level practicum and internship work, with the credentialing committee setting the number; there is no such credit toward the doctoral requirement.

At least 50% of the supervised experience must be the direct provision of therapy to individuals, couples, or families.

The couples-and-families minimum is quoted below as printed: the subdivision it cites is the 1,500-hour annual cap, not the direct-therapy half, so confirm with the Board which 1,500 hours the fifty percent applies to before you build a caseload around a number.

Section 27-8-4.1 names the examination, and the sequencing is the thing to plan around: the exam is a precondition of the provisional license, so the national test sits at the start of the West Virginia timeline rather than the end.

You may file the licensure application before you pass (27-8-3.5), and if you have not yet passed, the exam can be taken only after the Board finds you eligible (27-8-3.6).

Within a twelve-month period you may sit three times without asking the Board for further permission; an applicant who fails the initial exam and two subsequent exams is disqualified from retaking until the Board approves documentation of additional education and experience.

A successful score is valid for five years from the date of the exam, which is the clock to watch if your hours take longer than planned.

The ratio is fixed: a minimum of one hour of direct individual supervision for every twenty hours of practice, unless your supervisor decides more is needed.

When the supervisor is not a full-time employee of the same firm or agency as the applicant, supervision must also happen at least twice in each calendar month while the hourly minimum is maintained, and the supervisor must be reasonably available for telephone consultation.

An approved professional supervisor may not supervise more than four individual applicants.

Supervisors are pre-approved by the Board: a licensed marriage and family therapist or licensed professional counselor licensed for at least two years with five years of therapy/counseling experience and board-approved training in clinical supervision — a one-semester graduate course in MFT clinical supervision or a 30-hour continuing education course — or, in lieu of all that, a licensed mental health professional designated as an AAMFT approved supervisor before providing any supervision.

The supervisor's registration contract goes into the licensure application, and the Board's verification forms track quarterly reports plus a mid-point and final verification.

The rule defines marriage and family therapy as the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders within the context of marriage and family systems, with professional theories and techniques applied to individuals, couples, and families, singly or in groups — the quote below is the definition.

The Board adopts the current AAMFT Code of Ethics with the effect of a specifically promulgated rule, and a provisional applicant signs a statement of having read and understood it.

In practice you also carry two disclosure duties.

Display a professional disclosure statement where you perform services and make a copy available to clients on request.

And clearly state your licensure status using the title “Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist” or “LMFT” in all professional correspondence, documents, advertisements, and announcements.

An applicant currently licensed in another state may apply for endorsement review, but the Board must find the endorsing state's licensing requirements equal or greater to its own.

The exam does not disappear on this route: you must prove a pass on the Examination in Marital and Family Therapy or another board-approved examination, plus good standing and verification of licensure standing from every jurisdiction where you are licensed, including resolved and pending actions.

For a licensee who has actively practiced at the highest level with an ongoing caseload for at least five of the last seven years, the Board may waive the transcript and professional-recommendation items.

Post-degree supervision hours documented in another state can count if that state's supervisory requirements are equal to or greater than the Board's (27-8-7.3), and up to 500 supervision hours completed in another jurisdiction may be considered (27-8-3.7 — the same subdivision says documentation more than three years old, to include supervision, is not considered toward current licensing efforts).

There is no MFT interstate compact as of September 2026, so endorsement is the portability route.

The license renews annually on or before June 30, and every license the Board issues carries a June 30 expiration date.

Continuing education runs on a two-year cycle: 35 contact hours every biennium.

At least 3 of the 35 must be in MFT-related ethics — in a formal program with an approved presenter on your first renewal cycle, with AAMFT home studies or online programs allowed after that — and at least 2 must address mental health conditions specific to veterans and their family members.

Home study counts for at most 20 of the 35 hours, and only AAMFT pre-approved programs qualify.

Licensees with approved supervisor status complete 3 of their 35 hours in MFT clinical supervision.

Keep records for six years: for your first two bienniums you submit documentation with the renewal, after which the Board checks compliance by random audit.

The licensure rule in force is Series 8, filed and effective April 19, 2024 — a guide written before that date may describe an older text.

The rule's own sunset provision says it will terminate and have no further force or effect on August 1, 2027, and the renewal rule, Series 10 (effective July 1, 2017), carries a July 1, 2027 termination date; as printed those dates are binding, so confirm with the Board that the current text still governs before relying on any figure on this page.

Series 8 as now in force is the text that sequences the exam before the provisional license and sets the 36-month provisional term with its single 24-month renewal; the sources read contain no pre-2024 text, so what the 2024 re-issue changed is not stated.

The rule gives licensees two ways to step back without surrendering the license.

Inactive status (LMFT-I) bars counseling services of any kind and suspends the CE obligation while it lasts; to return to active status you complete 35 hours of continuing education in the two years preceding the application, including 3 in ethics, and the veterans requirement as printed asks for “two (2) of the twenty (20)” hours even though the return total is 35 — confirm the denominator with the Board.

A license inactive for more than five years can face additional continuing education, supervision and/or coursework.

Retirement status (LMFT-R) allows only volunteer work, with 20 contact hours each renewal cycle, 3 of them in ethics, and all 20 may be home study.

Both run on an application with a fee, so time the switch against the June 30 renewal date.