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When Session Law (S.L.) 2024-17 takes effect next Sunday, December 1, cases in which a Class A – E felony offense is alleged to have been committed at age 16 or 17 will originate under criminal jurisdiction. This means that the juveniles involved in these cases will be processed as defendants in criminal proceedings and not under the procedure for initiating a juvenile delinquency proceeding. At first blush, it may seem that this change will bring local procedure back to what it was before most offenses committed at ages 16 and 17 were brought under original juvenile jurisdiction (with the implementation of the Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act in 2019). However, since 2019, both federal and state law changed in ways that shifted the landscape of arrest processing and confinement of minors. This blog explores these changes and their impact on implementation of S.L. 2024-17.

In Wenninger v. Wenninger, decided May 7, 2024, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that an equitable distribution judgment was void for lack of a necessary party because the […]

*This post was written by Adult Protection Network Director Kristy Preston. Earlier this year, the UNC School of Government’s Adult Protection Network held six training events known as the “2024 […]

Hurricane Helene caused historic flooding in Western North Carolina, destroying or damaging approximately 126,000 residential properties. Many of those properties were occupied by tenants who now find themselves in unfit […]

In a series of recent decisions from the Court of Appeals, tenants in federally subsidized and federally funded properties have challenged whether the notice they received from their landlords was […]

A new law governing capacity to proceed in delinquency cases is set to take effect beginning with offenses committed on or after January 1, 2025. Part V. of Session Law 2023-114 creates a juvenile capacity standard and establishes procedures to be used when capacity to proceed is challenged. You can find a description of much of the new law in my blog from September. This post explains the juvenile remediation process that will be available under the new law for certain cases in which a juvenile is found to lack capacity to proceed.

Recently, the North Carolina Court of Appeals rendered a decision in In re A.K., __ N.C. App. __ (August 6, 2024), which touches on multiple issues relevant to juvenile abuse, neglect, dependency (AND) practitioners. (I blogged about one of those issues – a parent’s right to be represented by a retained attorney of their choosing, regardless of the attorney’s AND experience – here. My colleague Sara DePasquale published a blog about another issue: considering a family’s culture, including religion and language, in an AND proceeding.) This post will explore a third issue raised in the opinion: the appointment of a Rule 17 guardian ad litem (GAL) to an incompetent respondent parent.

In response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, the Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court entered an emergency order applicable to certain impacted counties on September 29, […]

In state fiscal year 2022-2023, county departments of social services in North Carolina received 35,400 reports alleging the abuse, neglect, or exploitation of vulnerable adults. Fifty-six counties across the state […]

Many counties in Western North Carolina continue to struggle with the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene.  As of today, seven county courthouses are reporting closures of some type.  An updated […]