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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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!
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).
Rule 60 Case | Interlocutory Case | Contempt Case
Jackson V. Jackson (now Clelland): Rule 60 v. Appeal
Sampson County – 2020
Tldr: Don’t use Rule 60 to correct erroneous orders. Appeal instead; otherwise, you’ll lose.
Mom and Dad had a custody trial. The trial court ordered that:
Plaintiff shall reimburse Defendant for travel to and from preschool and school and shall receive a credit for any trips he has to make to Fayetteville for custody exchanges and return at the same rate of reimbursement. The reimbursement rate shall be the rate given to State Employees for travel and the mileage will be from [an address] Street to the preschool or school or lesser mileage if Defendant moves her residence closer to the schools.”
Halili v. Ramnishta, Court of Appeals, September 1, 2020 (UCCJEA, inconvenient forum)
Mother, Father, and minor child lived in New York, but visited North Carolina in late June 2017 in anticipation of moving here – they were here for 11 days. They then returned to New York where they stayed until August, and they moved to North Carolina. After they moved here, the parties’ second child was born. In January 2018, Mother and both minor children moved to New York; Father stayed in North Carolina. Father initiated a custody action in North Carolina and Mother initiated a custody action in New York. The North Carolina court dismissed Father’s action after determining that North Carolina was not the home state of the older child and that North Carolina was an inconvenient forum for custody litigation concerning the younger child. Father appealed.
During an economic recession, the best tool for valuing a business is a discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis. A DCF analysis is the only valuation method that allows a financial expert to develop customized financial projections for the business that account for both the economic downturn and the eventual recovery. This article describes the DCF analysis. I also address a common misunderstanding about whether it is legally permissible to use financial projections to value a business in an equitable distribution case. As I explain, using financial projections to value a business does not run afoul of the directive found in Poore to value business goodwill “by taking into account past results, and not the postmarital efforts of the professional spouse[.]” Poore v. Poore, 75 N.C.App. 414, 421 (1985). Using a DCF analysis to value a business on the basis of its projected income is perfectly consistent with North Carolina law, as long as the projections account for a reasonable compensation for the business owner spouse.
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