Family Law Section Donations

By Mitchell Kelling 

Each year, the Family Law Section is usually fortunate enough to have sufficient funds left over to make several donations. This year, the Council elected to make donations to the UNC School of Government in honor of Cheryl Howell and to the North Carolina Bar Foundation with the funds earmarked for Free Legal Answers.

The UNC School of Government, and specifically Cheryl Howell, is a valuable resource for family law attorneys. Cheryl Howell is a wealth of information and is always able to provide an answer when one is needed. North Carolina is lucky to have Cheryl, and the Council appreciates her devotion to family law. A donation of $500.00 was made in Cheryl’s name.

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Case Law Update: Child Support

By Rebecca Watts

Craven County o/b/o Wooten v. Hageb, Court of Appeals of North Carolina, June 1, 2021 (Child Support)

Father and mother have two children together. Father has three other minor children from previous relationships – two of those other children live with him. Mother is a W-2 employee and father is self-employed. In its findings regarding father’s income, the trial court noted that father’s business had significant expenses but failed to take those expenses into consideration in its calculation of income for child support purposes – instead, the trial court utilized father’s gross monthly business income as his income for child support purposes. Additionally, because father was only listed as the father on the birth certificate of one of the two children living with him, the trial court only gave father credit for that one child. Father appealed. Read more

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Case Law Update: AOC 50C Order

By Rebecca Watts

DiPrima v. Vann, COA20-545, Court of Appeals of North Carolina, May 18, 2021

A sixteen-year-old plaintiff sought a 50C order against a seventeen-year-old defendant after the defendant intimidated and harassed her by following and touching her without her consent, threatening to kill or harm her if she stopped being his friend, threatening to shoot up their school, telling her he wanted to kill and torture two teachers, cutting himself in class in front of her, telling her he wanted to fight her parents, and telling her that he had researched how to make bombs and shoot up the school.

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Family Law Section Pro Bono Opportunities – March 2021

By Larissa Mervin

Family Law Section members, have you been looking for safe and effective ways to give back to the community? Well, look no further. Two upcoming North Carolina Bar Foundation pro bono events give us the opportunity to share the wealth of family law knowledge and experience that our section has to offer. Details for both events, including how to register for each one, can be found below.

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Calling All Nominations for the 2021 Family Law Section Distinguished Service Award

Larissa Mervin

Afi Johnson-Parris

By Larissa Mervin and Afi Johnson-Parris

Do you know of someone in our section who goes beyond the call of their duties and embodies the very spirit of what we do? Has a section member provided exemplary service to the profession of family law, as well as their local and broader communities? If so, we encourage you to consider nominating them for the 2021 Family Law Section Distinguished Service Award.

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Landmark Decision: Constitutionality of 50B’s Exclusion of Same-Sex Dating Partners

By Rebecca (Becky) Watts 

M.E. v. T.J., decided North Carolina Court of Appeals, December 31, 2020 (Constitutionality of 50B’s exclusion of same-sex dating partners)

In 1979, the North Carolina General Assembly added a chapter to our General Statutes to “provide remedies for domestic violence.” In these newly created domestic violence statutes, remedies were available to you if an act of domestic violence had been committed upon you by a past or present spouse or by a person of the opposite sex with whom you lived as if married. In other words, relief was available only to those who were or had been in a marital or marriage-like relationship with a member of the opposite sex. In 1995, perhaps recognizing that there were other types of domestic relationships in which violence was a problem, the General Assembly amended N.C.G.S. §50B-1 and provided an avenue for relief for those who suffered acts of domestic violence in situations involving parent/child relationships, grandparent/grandchild relationships, and relationships between parties who were unmarried but had a child together. The qualifying relationships all constituted a type of “familial relationship.” In 1997, the General Assembly again amended N.C.G.S. §50B-1 to expand the categories of relationships that would qualify a person for relief under Chapter 50B. At this point, the qualification of relationship types was changed from “familial relationship” to “personal relationship” so as to include “current or former household members” and “persons of the opposite sex who are in a dating relationship or who have been in a dating relationship.” While the addition of dating relationships to the category of relationships qualified you for relief under Chapter 50B, this addition explicitly excluded relief for those in a same-sex dating relationship.

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Leveraging Technology: Simplify the Complicated

By Danielle Kestnbaum

Family law is not an area that many attorneys feel neutral about. Most people either love it or won’t touch it if given the choice. The crushing stress that most family law clients are under and the ways in which that stress manifests itself mean that family law attorneys have to approach their cases differently than other types of lawyers.

Any experienced family law attorney knows that it’s not enough simply to provide clients with legal advice and solutions. Instead, to be effective, family law attorneys need to help their clients to see the practical day-to-day and long-term implications of their legal options all while their clients are muddling through one of the toughest times in their lives. This is no easy feat.

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Navigating the Holidays with COVID-19: Create a Roadmap for Success

By Kim R. Bonuomo

From the leaders of groups that deal with families in crisis:

Susan Myres, President of American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML)
Larry Fong, President, Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC)
Mindy Mitnick, AFCC President-Elect
Matt Sullivan, AFCC Past President
Laura Belleau, AAML Second Vice President
Kim Bonuomo, AAML committee co-chair for AAML/AFCC program Nancy Kellman AAML committee co-chair for AAML/AFCC program
Jill Peña, AAML Executive Director Peter Salem, AFCC Executive Director

The following are useful tools to help divorced/separated parents sharing custody to get through the upcoming holidays in the midst of a continuing pandemic with a minimum of conflict and stress.
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Family Law CLE Schedule

Happy October from the NCBA Family Law Section’s CLE committee! We have some exciting updates to share about upcoming CLEs:

Practical Magic: The 2020 Essentials of Family Law will be offered via live webcast on November 5-6. This biannual 2-day program has been updated and refreshed to include in-depth coverage of the statutory Chapter 50 claims, plus presentation on new topics such as domestic violence, technology, evidence, third-party claims, appellate issues, and so much more! Register online here.

The Family Law Section Annual Meeting is scheduled for live webcast on April 30, 2021. This program has been condensed into a 1-day format offering 6.25 hours of CLE credit, including 1.0 hours of substance abuse/mental health credit. Katherine Frye & Jill Jackson are planning an exciting program for our section!

If you have ideas for a great CLE topic, speaker, presentation or course theme, please let us know! Our next meeting is at 1 p.m. on November 18, 2020, via Zoom. All are welcome to join the CLE committee to help plan future CLE courses. We hope to see you soon at an upcoming program!

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When Children Reject Contact With a Parent

By Suzanne Chester

As a child’s attorney, I read an article by the child psychiatrist, Dr. Roy Lubit, with interest. The article is entitled “Valid and invalid ways to assess the reason a child rejects a parent: The continued malignant role of ‘parental alienation syndrome’” and is available in the Journal of Child Custody, 16(1): pages 42-66. Lubit’s article is loosely based on his review of fourteen child custody evaluations in which the forensic evaluator concluded the child had rejected a parent because of “parental alienation.” Lubit exposes the seriously flawed methodology and implicit bias which, he argues, led the evaluators to interpret the facts of the custody case through the lens of “parental alienation,” and to reach the foregone conclusion that “parental alienation” was responsible for the child’s rejection of a parent. By contrast, Lubit explores how a child’s rejection of visitation with a parent is much more often motivated by one of the following reasons: a) the child’s desire to remain with their primary attachment figure; or b) the child’s justified estrangement from a parent as a result of mistreatment or abuse; or c) a parent with major parenting deficiencies. As Lubit remarks: “[t]ragically for both justice and the welfare of children, conclusions concerning why a child rejects a parent frequently have more to do with who is doing the evaluation than the facts of the case and current scientific knowledge” (10).

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