Archive

• More on Law Enforcement Involvement in Custody Cases

  This entry was contributed by Cheryl Howell on June 16, 2017 at 9:00 am and is filed under Family Law.

  More on Law Enforcement Involvement in Custody Cases

  In my earlier blog post, Ordering Law Enforcement Officers to Enforce a Child Custody Order, Jan. 15, 2016, I discussed North Carolina case law indicating that a trial court’s authority to order law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of a child custody order is very limited. The General Assembly recently enacted legislation to clarify that the warrant provision in GS 50A-311 is a tool available to trial court judges seeking to enforce North Carolina custody orders as well as orders issued in other states and countries.

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• Does a foreign custody order have to be registered before our court can enforce or modify it?

  This entry was contributed by Cheryl Howell on March 6, 2015 at 5:00 am and is filed under Family Law.

  I hear this question frequently. Despite much effort, I have yet to find a case or a statute indicating that a custody order from another state must be registered before it can be enforced or modified. Of course, an action must be initiated to invoke the jurisdiction of our courts; something that can be done with a complaint, service of process and the normal rules of civil procedure. It is clear from UIFSA, Chapter 52C, that support orders from other states must be registered before a North Carolina court can enforce or modify the support order and UIFSA provides a clear statutory procedure for registration. There is no similar statutory requirement for child custody orders.

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