Recently, in the case of Shippen v. Shippen, the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld a civil contempt finding against a husband who failed to pay child support and post-separation support to his ex-wife. Shortly after the child support payments were ordered, John Lee Shippen joined the Twelve Tribes of…
If you have a daughter rather than a son, you are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce, according to research conducted by the Council on Contemporary Families. This statistic also multiplies with each new birth in the family. Researchers theorize that this statistic exists because fathers tend to become…
In this issue of our Charlotte Divorce Lawyer Blog Family Law Newsletter, we take a look at post-divorce issues such as automatic child support payments and changing beneficiaries on insurance policies and accounts. We also take a look at how taking a lower paying job will not always reduce child…
On October 20, 2009 the North Carolina Court of Appeals dismissed a father’s appeal of an Order modifying child support because it was interlocutory. The trial court entered its Order modifying child support which required the parties to submit (within 20 days) to the court an affidavit detailing the golf…
According to an article entitled Five Ways to Save Your Marriage published last week by CNBC, positive financial behavior contributes greatly to the long-term stability of marital relationships. Certainly, this does not come as a surprise to married couples in Charlotte working through these tough economic times. Conversely, and also…
The majority of child support cases in Charlotte are determined using the North Carolina child support guidelines. This is essentially a formula which takes into account a number of basic factors in determining the appropriate amount of child support. One of the most important variables in the child support formula…
The North Carolina Child Support Guidelines provide for a self support reserve. Meaning that, for parents who have an income below a certain threshhold, the formula works differently. On the chart of incomes in the child support guidelines, those with incomes below that threshhold will fall into the “shaded area.”…
As we have discussed here previously (Mecklenburg County Child Support Cases Affected? Some North Carolina Counties Scrambling for Planned Child Support Enforcement Takeover), North Carolina will no longer bear the responsibility for enforcing child support obligations. Mecklenburg County is one of the counties which currently relies on the state for…
According to the Charlotte Observer and the Associated Press, bankruptcy filings in 2009 numbered 1.4 million and are up 32% nationwide. These tough economic times cannot help but make divorce cases, which can be very difficult when times are good, all the more difficult to manage, settle and take to…
Although families are certainly feeling the impact of a recent downward turn in the economy, nationwide trends indicate that those parents who are paying child support are being hit the hardest. In most cases in North Carolina, child support is calculated using a formula. One of the most important variables…