North Carolina Divorce Lawyers Blog

Articles Tagged with custody

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Divorce can be stressful.  The process of dividing property that has accumulated between you and your ex-spouse is a given.  Questions regarding how you will split all that you have shared – the marital residence, cars, custodial time with the children – are all commonplace questions individuals ask themselves when going through a divorce.  However, another issue has become increasingly commonplace among separating couples, and that is the question of how custody of family pets will be arranged.  As people begin increasingly to refer to pets as their “fur babies,” family pets are slowly becoming a contentious topic for many divorcing couples. Continue reading →

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Alaska’s Supreme Court recently decided an issue revolving around custody of a minor child born through artificial insemination to a same-sex couple. As same-sex marriages and reproductive technologies continue to be more commonplace, we are seeing an increase in cases that involve such parties. The law, as always, lags behind the times a few years, but it is imperative that the courts begin setting a precedent to allow such parties to adequately address the family law issues that have been so familiar in opposite-sex couples. Continue reading →

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Blackwell v. Blackwell 2021-NCCOA-537

  1. Facts: Mother and Father began a child custody action. Mother subpoenaed numerous mental health documents from healthcare providers. These documents would have purportedly been used at trial to establish Father’s mental health and substance abuse. In 2016, the parties had consented to a custody schedule in a memorandum of judgment. Before the formal written order was entered, Mother filed to modify custody because her job had moved to Pennsylvania. The formal order was entered in December of 2016. Mother then took the child to Pennsylvania with her in 2017. Father filed for ex parte emergency custody, modification of custody, and contempt. Mother requested that the trial court examine the mental health records. At trial, the judge did not admit those records as evidence, stating that he was not concerned with events prior to the entry of the custody order. Eventually, Father’s motions were granted, and he was awarded with permanent custody. Mother appealed.

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There is a mess of a custody case in Massachusetts (MA) that arose from a very reckless surrogacy situation. Apparently, a same-sex couple posted to social media asking for help having a baby. A friend then offered to conceive with her boyfriend (read: the baby would be biologically unrelated to the couple seeking help) and then give the baby to the couple. You might guess what happened next. The friend gave birth and then decided she wanted to keep the baby. The courts in MA decided that these events amounted to an informal surrogacy. The case has been ongoing since 2018. MA has no surrogacy statutes despite judges and advocates calling for enactment of surrogacy laws. The 2021 opinion from the MA Court of Appeals in this case actually begins with a plea to the legislature for guidance on surrogacy arrangements (surrogacy contracts). Continue reading →

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There have been phones and computers around for decades now, and in the child custody context they have been instrumental in providing access to children for noncustodial parents. But since Facetime has come around, we are beginning to see some court documents, specifically custody orders, reference Facetime when crafting custodial schedules. The common form of this Facetime provision is to order that the custodial parent—the parent with physical custody of the child at the time—make the children available for Facetime calls. They differ by the duration of the call, and some will specify specific windows of time in which the noncustodial parent may call. Most also add some sort of “reasonableness” to the equation, so that the Facetime provision is not abused by either party. Continue reading →

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Matthew Taylor Coleman and his wife, Abby Coleman, were living a picturesque life in their Santa Barbara, California home with their two young children—Kaleo, a two-year-old boy, and Roxy, a ten-month-old girl— when events took a turn for the worse.  While the family was packing for a camping trip, Matthew allegedly placed the children in the family van and drove away without a word to Abby.  She was unable to reach him by phone but eventually tracked his location with the help of authorities and the Find My iPhone application.  After being stopped by law enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border and taken into custody, Matthew told investigators he killed his children with a spearfishing gun after being “enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories.”  Believing that Abby possessed serpent DNA that had been passed down to his children, Matthew claimed the death of his children was “saving the world from monsters.”  Matthew has been charged with the foreign murder of U.S. nationals.  Continue reading →

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WALTER V. WALTER 2021-NCCOA-428

The language contained in a consent order should be unambiguous and clearly state what each party is required to do under the order. When the reading of the order leads to multiple reasonable interpretations, it may become impossible to enforce through contempt. Below is a custody consent order that had one such line of ambiguous language: Continue reading →

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Angelina Jolie recently experienced a small victory in her contentious custody dispute with Brad Pitt. The California Court of Appeals has disqualified the private judge, John Ouderkirk, from further ruling on the matter.  Jolie and Pitt selected Judge John Ouderkirk to handle the custody dispute in the hope that a private judge would further promote the privacy of the case.  However, last year, Jolie asked Ouderkirk to disqualify himself for failing to sufficiently disclose his business relationships with Pitt’s attorneys in a timely manner.  A lower court initially ruled that Jolie’s filing seeking disqualification came too late, but Jolie’s attorneys appealed from that order.  The California Court of Appeals then ruled that Ouderkirk’s business relationships with Pitt’s attorneys raised concerns for his impartiality. Continue reading →

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M.E.G. v. C.P., unpublished (2021).

It is not unheard of for one parent to move out of state. If the parties have minor children together, then the question is which parent is primarily going to have custody of the children. Many factors may come into play when making the determination. One set of parents in New Jersey tried to negotiate a relocation in an agreement. In this case, we see just how a court treats such agreement. Continue reading →

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Lewis v. Lewis, No. COA06-599

 

Benjamin Lewis (“Ben”) and Gina Lewis (“Gina”) married on January 1, 1994 and had two children.  Ben and Gina divorced on August 17, 1998.  On June 26, 1998, Ben and Gina executed a separation agreement wherein they agreed to exercise joint custody of the minor children.  The separation agreement was incorporated in the divorce judgment and stipulated that the children would reside primarily with Gina and spend every other weekend and summer vacation with Ben.  They further agreed that Ben would pay half of the children’s uninsured medical and dental expenses and $200.00 each month as additional child support to Gina.  Both Ben and Gina went on to remarry, and as a result of Gina’s remarriage she moved to Yuma, Arizona.  On August 14, 2000, Ben filed a motion in the cause seeking a modification of his visitation schedule with the minor children, asserting that a substantial change in circumstances had occurred due to Gina’s move to Arizona. Continue reading →