North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

The respondent-mother’s children were removed from her care because of substance abuse, mental health, and domestic violence issues, none of which she resolved. Indeed, the mother was unemployed, relied on her mother to meet her expenses, lived in a storage ...

After many positive drug tests and no progress on her case plan, respondent’s parental rights were terminated. Respondent’s counsel has filed a no-merit brief pursuant to N.C. R. App. P. 3.1(e). Counsel advised respondent of her right to file a ...

On a prior appeal, we remanded for the trial court to make findings regarding the willfulness of the respondent-mother’s failure to interact with the minor child, given domestic violence protective orders prohibiting respondent from contacting the minor child’s father, a ...

Faced with evidence of the plaintiff-mother’s dysfunctional relationship with her parents, the trial court should have made, but did not make, findings as to more of the factors set out in Ramirez-Barker v. Barker, 107 N.C. App. 71, 418 S.E.2d ...

  While respondent’s appeal of the trial court’s permanency planning order was pending, respondent’s daughter reached the age of 18, rendering this appeal moot. Even though the order includes a finding of fact that respondent failed to address his ongoing ...

The trial court noted that the respondent-mother had indicated she “is of Cherokee ancestry, but did not know a specific tribe,” and the record shows that DSS sent notice to the Cherokee Nation and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. However, ...

  One of the bases for terminating the respondent-mother’s parental rights was that, though she had the ability to pay some support for her five children, she paid nothing toward their support. At the beginning of the six-month period before ...

  When the respondent-mother brought 11-month-old “David” to the hospital with a broken leg, doctors found numerous other broken bones in various stages of healing. The evidence showed that respondent and her then-fiancé were David’s only caregivers in the time ...

  Since the parties’ 17-year-old son did not obtain a judicial emancipation decree, the child support payments due from the defendant-father to the plaintiff-mother vested when they became due, and the father should have been required to pay the arrearage. ...

Even though “Sam’s” paternal grandmother was initially offered as a relative placement option, since (1) the Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services declined to recommend that Sam be placed with her and (2) the trial court determined in ...