The North Carolina Supreme Court has stated that “[a] judgment awarding custody is based upon conditions found to exist at the time it is entered ….” Stanback v. Stanback, 266 N.C. 72, 76 (1965). See also Kellanos v. Kellanos, 251 N.C. App. 149 (2016)( a district court must consider the pros and cons of ordering primary custody with each parent, contemplating the two options as they exist [at the time of the hearing], and then choose which one is in the child’s best interest.”).
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Tag: modification of custody
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Back to Parenting Coordinators in Custody Cases
***NOTE: After the publication of this blog, the statute dealing with parenting coordinators was extensively amended. See S.L. 2019-172, effective October 1, 2019.
A few weeks ago, I posted blog about Parenting Coordinators (“PCs”) in Child Custody Cases and noted the ambiguity concerning the court’s authority to respond when a PC requests a hearing pursuant to GS 50-97 and identifies changes that need to be made to the existing custody order. Shortly thereafter, the Court of Appeals provided more guidance on this issue. In Tankala v. Pithavadian, NC App (July 19, 2016), the court held that the strict limitation on a court’s authority to “tweak” custody orders – see Blog “No ‘tweaking’ of Custody Orders Allowed – does not necessarily mean the court cannot address problems identified by a PC.