North Carolina Lawyers Weekly

  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 ...

  The respondent-mother contends that the only condition that directly led to “Chloe’s” removal was respondent’s potential lengthy incarceration in Mississippi, which she claims to have remedied. However, other factors were also involved in Chloe’s removal, such as an open ...

  The defendant-mother’s behavior—such as hiding the parties’ child from the plaintiff-father and engaging in a game that required the child to touch her breast—have traumatized the child; after visits with the mother, incidents of the child soiling her underpants ...

The trial court should have exercised its discretion in determining whether to allow the defendant-wife to present the testimony of an expert witness, whom the wife disclosed only one day before the parties’ alimony trial. Upon our de novo review ...

Where a prior custody order focused on the father’s drinking problem, a custody modification order indicated an effect on the parties’ children when it said the father “is no longer exhibiting a drinking problem … enjoyed unsupervised visits with [his ...

  In re B.O.A., __ N.C. __, 831 S.E.2d 305 (2019), was a case involving termination of parental rights; however, it is binding in this case involving adjudications of abuse, neglect and dependency. Pursuant to B.O.A., the trial court is ...

In granting the defendant-father’s motion to modify custody, the trial court made 30 findings as to the children’s schools, doctors and extracurricular activities; the parties’ disparate work schedules; and the relative support groups of family and friends each party had ...