K.E Culbertson & Associates States Important Changes to North Carolina Family Law
Change is permanent and a change in state laws ensures the easy adoption of changes that occur in our society. Today, The law office of K.E Culbertson & Associates, one of the significant pillars of family law in North Carolina explains the important changes that have occurred over the years.
GREENSBORO, N.C., Oct.12, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- When it comes to Family Law, North Carolina Family Law is one of the slowest evolving States, particularly in the law involving Alienation of Affections, Adultery, and Criminal Conversation. These laws deal with a third party interfering in a sexual and emotional way with a valid and existing marriage. Many experienced North Carolina family lawyers have strong opinions as to whether these types of lawsuits, which many see as antiquated, should be done away with, legislatively.
However, in other areas, particularly in the areas of child support and equitable distribution (a division of marital property by the court following separation), there have been significant changes. Child support, until several years ago, was always based upon a showing of the legitimate and necessary expenses of the child as compared to the incomes of the supporting spouse in relation to the combined incomes of both parents. There was for many decades a great deal of room for experienced North Carolina Family Law lawyers to make arguments that were tailored to the specific circumstances of the client and the family is dealt with in a customized way. This has changed.
North Carolina Child Support Law now has been standardized into a uniform, across-the-board, formulaic computation of support based upon a set percentage in relation to the combined incomes of the parents. While there are allowances for special circumstances in which a North Carolina Family Law lawyer may ask the court to depart from the "Guidelines," as they are titled, these allowances are often difficult to succeed in persuading a court to agree with, as it is much more convenient for a court to simply stick to the "Guidelines."
While it is true that the method of proving child support was comparatively cumbersome prior to the adoption of the "Guidelines," and that the process did take up much more court time and provided a certain amount of inefficiency in the child support enforcement process, the Guidelines method does seem a comparatively cookie-cutter and inhumane approach sometimes. May supporting spouses feel as if they've been given the "bum's rush" in child support court and that the judge failed to notice the particular difficulties any individual supporting spouse or child might have present in his/her case.
An experienced North Carolina Child Support Lawyer, such as Krispen Culbertson at Culbertson and Associates, will always try to find a way to infuse the particular needs of a client into the child support determination process.
Regarding the division of marital property (Equitable Distribution, or "E.D.," as family lawyers like to call it), there have been very complex and useful changes, which really do still allow an experienced North Carolina Family Lawyer to argue special circumstances in altering a strict "50/50" division adherence by a court.
The best example is the list of special factors listed in the E.D. statute that allows a court to split property and money in something other than a straight-line fashion. The factors that can be used to weigh in favor of one or the other litigant include roughly 16 listed factors in NCGS 50-20(c), but the Statute leaves open the possibility for the court to consider literally "any other factor which the court finds to be just and proper." The area of Equitable Distribution is the one area in which an intelligent and experienced North Carolina family lawyer really gets to use his brain and be creative in trying to tailor a just result for his client under the existing law.
The Family Law of North Carolina is evolving and growing just as the needs of the courts and more mobile families do, but the bottom line is that there is still a huge difference in outcomes when using the services of an experienced North Carolina Family attorney group such as Culbertson and Associates.
Media Contact
Krispen Culbertson, Culbertson & Associates, 1 336-272-4299, [email protected]
SOURCE Culbertson & Associates
Share this article