*For more information about this new law, see the following supplemental book chapter, Suspected Child Maltreatment Occurring in a Child Care Facility, to the book, Reporting Child Abuse and Neglect in North Carolina. Both the supplemental chapter and book are available electronically and for free.

It seems fitting that the first blog post of the 2016 calendar year addresses a new law that became effective on January 1^st.  S.L. 2015-123 is “An Act to Transition Abuse and Neglect Investigations in Child Care Facilities to the Division of Child Development and Early Education [DCDEE] within the Department of Health and Human Services” (DHHS). In a nutshell, county child welfare agencies (county departments) retain responsibility for screening and assessing reports of suspected child abuse, neglect, and dependency by a parent, guardian, custodian, or caretaker but are no longer responsible for screening and assessing reports of suspected abuse and neglect of a child in a child care facility. As a result, petitions filed in district court by a county department that allege a child has been abused or neglected will no longer be based on circumstances created in a child care facility. Instead, the DCDEE has assumed responsibility for investigating suspected child maltreatment occurring in a child care facility. These investigations are a component of NCDEE’s licensure procedures and requirements. S.L. 2015-123 sets forth the new process in Article 7 of G.S. Chapter 110.

In North Carolina, a 16 or 17 year old who has resided in the same North Carolina county for six months may petition the district court for an emancipation from his or her parents, guardian, or custodian.  According to statistics from the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), there have been 986 emancipation filings between fiscal year 2007-2008 and 2014-2015, averaging over 120 cases a year.  Despite this number, there is a surprising lack of appellate decisions regarding juvenile emancipations. The lack of opinions has left both district courts and petitioners to figure out what the statutes require. Continue Reading

At common law a landlord confronted with a non-paying tenant had only one hope for regaining possession of rental property: a lease provision spelling out that the tenant’s default would trigger the landlord’s right to repossess the property (commonly referred to as a forfeiture clause). When the parties have agreed in advance to this consequence for failure to pay rent, an action for summary ejectment merely asks the court to enforce the agreement of the parties. The common law rule was that absent such agreement, the landlord was left to the unsatisfactory recourse of cutting his losses by terminating the lease as soon as possible and attempting to collect unpaid rent through an action for money owed — with all of the attendant problems associated with the collection of money judgments.

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What is an LME/MCO?

 It often feels like the mental health, developmental disabilities, and substance abuse (MH/DD/SA) fields and acronyms go hand in hand.  These acronyms can be confusing and intimidating to people who are not intimately familiar with this area of the law and practice.  This confusion is exacerbated by the fact that over the last few decades, there have been a number of changes to the delivery of public MH/DD/SA services in North Carolina.  One of the major changes was the creation of local management entities/managed care organizations (LME/MCOs).

The purpose of the LME/MCO is to deliver MH/DD/SA services by using primarily state and federal resources appropriated to them by state government to authorize, pay for, manage, and monitor services provided by their network of private providers.  See Mark F. Botts, Mental Health Services, in County and Municipal Government in North Carolina Ch. 40, at 683 (Frayda S. Bluestein ed., 2014).   As of today, there are eight LME/MCOs under contract with the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to provide public MH/DD/SA services in North Carolina.

What is an MDE?

LME/MCOs overlap with the world of incompetency and adult guardianship proceedings filed before the clerk of superior court when it comes to the preparation and assembly of multidisciplinary evaluations (MDEs).  An MDE is an important tool in an incompetency proceeding under G.S. Chapter 35A that is used to assist the court in determining: Continue Reading

Both federal and state law prohibits the possession of firearms by anyone subject to a qualifying domestic violence protective order. However, the fact that possession of firearm is a crime does not give the trial court authority to order a defendant in a 50B proceeding to surrender all weapons.

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