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Before October 1, 1994, it was not always easy to tell if and/or when a court order or judgment had been entered. The law allowed entry of judgment based on an oral rendition by the judge in certain circumstances and it was not uncommon for disputes to arise over whether a proper notation of the rendition had been made upon the court record as required for an actual entry of judgment to occur. Because it generally is very important for parties and the court to know precisely when an order or judgment is entered and enforceable, Rule 58 of the Rules of Civil Procedure was amended effective October 1, 1994, to make the moment of entry of judgment more easily identifiable. According to Rule 58, “a judgment is entered when it is reduced to writing, signed by the judge, and filed with the clerk of court.” This means that since October 1, 1994, statements made by the judge from the bench are not enforceable orders or judgments and a judge is not required to enter a written order or judgment that conforms to any statement made from the bench.

READ POST "Rule 58 and Entry of Civil Judgments: Statements from the bench are not court orders (May 3, 2017)"

The duty of the trial court in an equitable distribution proceeding is to identify, value and distribute the marital and divisible property and debt of the parties. There is a presumption in favor of an ‘in-kind’ distribution of marital and divisible assets, meaning the law presumes the court will accomplish an equitable distribution by distributing the actual assets and debts between the parties rather than by distributing assets and debts to one and ordering the receiving party to pay the other a distributive award. Despite this presumption, however, distributive awards are common. The presumption in favor of an in-kind distribution is rebutted by evidence the property “is a closely held business entity or is otherwise not susceptible of division in-kind.” G.S 50-20(e).

If the court can give all of the property to one and order that spouse to buy-out the other’s interest with a cash distributive award, can the court instead order that property be sold with the cash proceeds distributed between the parties? The answer to that question in North Carolina became less clear last week.

READ POST "Equitable Distribution: Can the court order the sale of marital property? (April 28, 2017)"

On April 10, 2017, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, signed legislation raising the age of criminal responsibility in the state of New York from 16 to 18. New York and North Carolina were previously the only two states that automatically prosecuted 16-year-olds as adults. Long-standing raise the age campaigns in both states have repeatedly failed due to conflicting views about the need to rehabilitate juveniles versus the need to maintain public safety. New York lawmakers recently reached a compromise that raises the age for most juveniles but still allows violent offenders to be tried as adults. A similar approach being considered by North Carolina lawmakers would raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to include 16 and 17-year-olds who commit misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, but would exclude violent offenders. Here’s how NC’s raise the age proposal compares to NY’s new law.

In my last post, I wrote about the office of the clerk of superior court and the clerk’s judicial authority.  I provided a basic framework for this authority and noted that that the clerk’s non-criminal authority falls into three main categories:

1. estates and trusts,
2. civil, and
3. special proceedings.

North Carolina magistrates are not required to be lawyers, and most of them aren’t. Add to that the fact that most small claims litigants are not represented by attorneys and the stage is set for a challenging (and often entertaining) series of events that may not fit neatly into those rigid categories the law is so fond of. Make no mistake: this system is deliberate in design and for the most part it works quite well. Small claims court offers citizens a quick, inexpensive way to resolve their disputes, and appeals from small claims judgments by unhappy litigants are few. Errors—by litigants and by magistrates—are an expected part of this system, and the remedies for those errors are, also, deliberate in design. This, too, works well most of the time, but sometimes things can get a little confusing. I hope this post will help sort out that confusion.

READ POST "Small Claims Court: What’s the Fix When Things Go Wrong? (April 19, 2017)"

As I mentioned in an earlier post, parties to civil actions are responsible for paying their own attorneys’ fees unless a statute specifically permits fee shifting.  In child custody actions, G.S. 50-13.6 allows a court to shift some or all of one party’s fees to the other party under certain circumstances.  The statute provides that:

In an action or proceeding for the custody or support, or both, of a minor child, including a motion in the cause for the modification or revocation of an existing order for custody or support, or both, the court may in its discretion order payment of reasonable attorney’s fees to an interested party acting in good faith who has insufficient means to defray the expense of the suit.

If the grounds for entitlement are met, awarding the fee is still in the court’s discretion, as is the amount awarded. Our courts have made clear, however, that fee orders will be remanded if they do not include specific findings of fact as to both entitlement and reasonableness. I discuss the required findings below.

Policy.  The purpose of the fee-shifting provision in 50-13.6 is not to act as sanction against the party ordered to pay the other’s fees.  Instead, it is to help level the playing field for a party at a financial disadvantage in litigating custody of a child.  As our Supreme Court has said, the statute helps make it possible for a party “to employ adequate counsel to enable [him or her], as litigant, to meet [the other party] in the suit.” Taylor v. Taylor, 343 N.C. 50 (1996).  For this reason, fee eligibility does not depend on the outcome of the case. Fees are available even to a party who does not prevail, as long as he or she participated in good faith.  Hausle v. Hausle, 226 N.C. App. 241 (2013).

Collaboration at Its Finest When I think of effective collaboration, I think of Kiesha Crawford, manager of the Juvenile CIP at the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts. She […]

A county director of social services may be appointed to serve as guardian for an adult who has been adjudicated incompetent by a clerk of superior court. Making decisions about […]

*This post was previously published on the School’s NC Criminal Law Blog on March 29th and we thought it would be of interest to our readers.

A week ago, I sat in the gallery of the United States Supreme Court with twenty North Carolina district court judges listening to Chief Justice John Roberts announce the court’s opinion in Endrow v. Douglas County School District. The unanimous opinion, in which the court reversed the Tenth Circuit’s holding that a child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) satisfies federal law as long as it is calculated to confer an educational benefit that is “merely more than de minimis” quickly became the topic of questioning later that morning in the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee and current Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch. Listening to the Chief Justice explain the court’s reasoning was fascinating, and it was thrilling to have a bird’s eye view as the news traveled through the city and the nation. This experience was just one part of the North Carolina Judicial College’s inaugural Supreme Court Seminar for district court judges, which gave some of our state’s most experienced jurists an opportunity to consider the role of the nation’s highest court and the rule of law in our democracy, and to reflect upon their own judicial role.

In my last blog post, I wrote about a recent change to federal law regarding the portion of a military pension subject to division by a state court in a divorce proceeding. Effective December 23, 2016, the definition of disposable retired pay in the context of a division of a military pension in a marital dissolution proceeding found in 10 USC sec. 1408 was amended to be the amount a service member would have received had he retired on the date of divorce plus cost of living adjustment accruing between the date of divorce and the date of actual retirement. Before amendment, the definition of disposable retired pay was the total amount a service member receives upon actual retirement, regardless of whether that amount reflected years of service and elevations in rank of the service member following the date of divorce.

The change in the definition of disposable retired pay does not appear to impact the way we classify and value a military pension under North Carolina equitable distribution law, but the change does raise issues regarding how military pensions actually are divided between the parties when the fixed percentage, deferred distribution method of division is used.

READ POST "Equitable Distribution: Change to Federal Law Regarding Military Pensions Part 2 (March 24, 2017)"