North Carolina

High court’s inaction means same-sex marriage coming to NC by end of this week

Published on: October 7, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Can any attorney help me with my family law needs in North Carolina?”

The Charlotte Observer is reporting that same-sex marriage could be legal soon in North Carolina—by the end of this week!

Virginia put the issue to its voters eight years ago, and 57-percent of Virginians voted to amend that state’s constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The Virginia amendment also forbade the state from recognizing same-sex marriages formalized in other states.

North Carolina law has always defined “A valid sufficient marriage” as one “created by the consent of a male and female person.” Voters in the Tar Heel state sought to eliminate any doubt about their stance on the issue in 2012, voting 61-percent to 38-percent in favor of a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between one man and one woman and bans any other type of civil union or domestic partnership.

Virginia’s amendment—passed eight years ago—has seen its legal challenges litigated all the way to United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—the highest appellate court to consider cases from that state short of the United States Supreme Court. The Fourth Circuit struck down Virginia’s amendment, ruling that the ban violated gay couples’ fundamental right to marry.

Ex-sheriff seeks to criminalize the practice of trolling for divorce clients

Published on: October 2, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Can any attorney help me with my family law needs in North Carolina?”

If you or someone you know has been injured in an accident… If you live in the United States, you have heard that phrase a few trillion times. But really, if you have been injured in an accident, you are likely to receive a mailer from a lawyer—or two, or five hundred.

What about if you seek a domestic violence protective order and file for divorce? If you are in Michigan, you might receive a mailer from a family-law attorney who is eager to help you. Or not, if a former-sheriff state legislator has his way.

The legislator, Sen. Rick Jones of Grand Ledge, Michigan, is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit lawyers in that state from reaching out to potential divorce clients to offer their legal services until two weeks after the named defendant in a divorce filing has been served with divorce papers and proof of that service has been filed.

Of course, the ex-sheriff put some teeth in his bill. A first-time violation of the rule would be a misdemeanor and subject the violator to a $1,000 fine. Repeat offenders would face up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine, or both.

Think same-sex marriage is tough? Try same-sex divorce

Published on: September 30, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Charlotte Divorce Attorney Matthew R. Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What does a “No-Fault’ divorce mean in NC?”

Proponents of same-sex marriage have railed against the legal difficulties that confront same-sex partners interested in tying the proverbial knot. Now some same-sex couples are facing a different—and perhaps even more difficult—legal issue: same-sex divorce.

Beth Littrell, a senior attorney for the civil rights group of Lambda Legal’s Southern regional office in Atlanta, told the Associated Press that divorce for same-sex couples is a legal mess. Lambda Legal is a national organization whose mission is to help lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people obtain full recognition of civil rights. While same-sex marriage is legal in nineteen states and the District of Columbia, state laws governing divorce have not evolved with same-sex marriage, leading to confusion, frustration and years of litigation.

Cori Jo Long and Brooke Powell travelled from their home in Texas to New Hampshire in 2010 in order to take advantage of the latter state’s permissive laws on same-sex marriage. Their marriage unraveled in 2013, but so far they have been unable to obtain a divorce. Long and Powell attempted to divorce in Texas, but since that state does not recognize same-sex marriage, a judge ruled that he did not have jurisdiction to void their union or grant a divorce.

“It is limbo,” Long said. “It’s waiting and seeing. That’s all I can do.”

Studies show U.S. marriage rate declining, especially for younger Americans

Published on: September 25, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What does uncontested divorce mean?”

A record one-in-five adults aged 25 or older had never been married as of 2012, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. That’s double the amount of never-married adults from 1960. What happened?

Pew blames “a variety of reasons,” but places its emphasis on the economy, which it says has grown slowly and unequally in recent decades. Median hourly wages for men ages 25 to 34 have declined 20-percent since 1980 “in real terms.” Real terms means that even though the amount of money men in that age group earn may have increased, the cost of everything else—of living—means that more money actually buys them less.

Economic woes have shrunk the “pool of available employed men,” and those are the ones that 80-percent of never-married women say they want. These women want a man who has a steady job. But women are the ones whose educational achievement and labor-force participation rate continue to rise.

That has created a deficit in the number of employed, available men per 100 women. In 1960, the number of employed, available men per 100 women in the 25 to 34 age group was 139. By 2012, that number had sunk to 91. Of course, never-married women can select their mates from other pools of available men such as older men or divorcees.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter Legal Matters today!

Published on: September 23, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question ” Is there some property that the judge cannot divide?”

If you haven’t been subscribing to Legal Matters, our quarterly family law newsletter, you should start now.

This quarter, we discuss how the Internal Revenue Service has spotted a huge gap between alimony deductions claimed and the amount of alimony income received by those entitled to it. In general, people who are ordered to pay alimony to a spouse or ex-spouse can claim and receive a tax deduction. The government report suggests that either people paying alimony are exaggerating the amounts they paid or people receiving alimony are underreporting that income, or both. Deductions exceeded reported alimony income by some $2 billion.

The IRS has announced that it is changing the way it selects tax returns for audits in order to catch more suspicious returns involving alimony. What does this mean for you? It means that when reporting income or claiming deductions related to alimony, you need to be precise. If you have questions regarding how much alimony you should be reporting or the amount of deductions to which you are entitled, you should speak to a family law attorney to make sure you are handling these issues correctly.

Also in this issue of our family law newsletter, we explore how the issue of student-loan debt can complicate divorce settlements. In general, marital debts are divided equally, but many spouses incurred student-loan debt before they married, making it separate debt. Some common issues complicate the division of student-loan debt in divorces, such as whether both spouses contributed to paying off portions of the debt during the marriage, which spouse benefited from the spouse’s degree during the marriage, whether the loans were consolidated and which spouse can afford repaying the debt.

Rape victim must pay child support, may or may not get to meet his daughter

Published on: September 19, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “How is the amount of child support decided in North Carolina?”

Nick Olivas said he was a lonely, 14-year-old kid going through a rough patch when his 20-year-old neighbor raped him. He said he didn’t know at the time that under Arizona law, a child under 15 could consent to sex, making him a victim of statutory rape. He didn’t press charges against the woman, but now the State of Arizona is after Olivas to pay child support for the daughter he fathered with the woman.

Olivas said he and the woman went their separate ways. He graduated high school, attended college and became a Phoenix-based medical assistant. He said he was living his life and enjoying being young when, two years ago, he was served with papers demanding child-support payments for a six-year-old daughter.

Arizona—like Kansas and California—considers the circumstances of the daughter’s conception irrelevant for child-support purposes, said Mel Felt, director of the New York-based advocacy group the National Center for Men. In 1993, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that a 13-year-old boy who impregnated his 17-year-old babysitter was liable for child support, even though he had been legally unable to consent to sex. A California state court issued a similar ruling involving a 15-year-old boy whose 34-year-old neighbor was convicted of raping him.

Marriage is for the dogs, the goats, and cardboard cutouts of Robert Pattinson

Published on: September 16, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Can any attorney help me with my family law needs in North Carolina?”

Marriage is for the dogs, or at least that is what one British woman thinks. Amanda Rodgers was so smitten with her dog Sheba that she decided marry it.

Rodgers, 47, married Sheba this past March in a ceremony attended by some 200 well-wishers. The woman said she knew Sheba was the one for her when the dog was just two weeks old. “I fell in love with her,” Rodgers said. “I knew that we were meant to be.”

Rodgers told a British television news team that she proposed to Sheba on bended knee. The dog’s wagging tale meant that it accepted her proposal. Their wedding ceremony was sealed with a kiss.

Kissing is as far as Australian Joseph Guiso would go with the 5-year-old yellow Labrador he married “in an elaborate wedding ceremony in a local park” in 2010, according to the New York Daily News. Guiso, a self-described religious man, laughed off critics of his union with the canine and described their relationship as platonic.

Effects of divorce, separation more profound for young children of wealthy parents

Published on: September 11, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “What are my custody rights if the other parent moves?”

Researchers from Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown University who used a national sample of nearly 4,000 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth have concluded that young children from wealthy families exhibit more behavioral problems following their parents’ divorce than children from poor families.

Rebecca Ryan, an assistant professor of psychology at Georgetown, told Time Magazine that her team’s findings show that “family changes affect children’s behavior in higher-income families more than children’s behavior in lower-income families—for better and for worse.” Ryan was the study’s lead author. She conceded that she nor her researchers could pinpoint any reasons behind the spike in behavior problems among young children from wealthier families.

Ryan did speculate that fathers in wealthier families—most often breadwinners—often leave the home, leading to a steep decline in household income. In general, wealthier families see a greater shift in financial circumstances when parents divorce or separate than lower-income families. The changes that accompany that shift such as moving to a new neighborhood or changing schools may lead to instability in children’s lives.

NFL getting publicity it doesn’t want with release of new domestic violence video

Published on: September 8, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question “Can any attorney help me with my family law needs in North Carolina?”

Edit: The Baltimore Ravens have just released Ray Rice from his contract and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has announced Rice will be suspended indefinitely from the NFL.

American National Football League fans were treated to a slew of close victories and upsets on the opening weekend of the 2015 season. The Monday blues followed too close for the league’s comfort on the heels of season openers.

Earlier this year, video footage obtained by Burbank, California-based “Thirty-Mile Zone,” also known as TMZ, showed Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice dragging his then-fiancé Janay Palmer out of an Atlantic City elevator. News reports referenced a video obtained by police that showed Rice hitting Palmer and knocking her unconscious in the elevator.

That second video was obtained by TMZ and released at 1:00 a.m. Monday morning while sports shows around the country were still broadcasting highlights from Sunday’s round of games.

The incident occurred on Feb. 15 at the Revel Hotel and Casino. Evidently Rice and Palmer argued before entering an elevator carriage. New footage from inside the carriage shows Rice striking Palmer in the face. The blow causes Palmer to fall, striking her head against a handrail and apparently falling unconscious to the floor of the carriage.

Men write on Reddit of the moment they knew their marriage was over

Published on: September 4, 2014 | On behalf of Arnold & Smith, PLLC

Board Certified Family Law Specialist Matt Arnold of Arnold & Smith, PLLC answers the question ” I’m not getting along with my husband. We’ve been married two weeks and it was a mistake. Can’t I just get an annulment?”

Last Tuesday, men who had divorced their wives provided, via the online sharing site Reddit, a post-mortem on their marriages, divulging for the virtual world the moment they knew their martial bonds were strained to the point of no return. Their stories may be enlightening to couples—women in particular—who fear they are headed for divorce.

The Huffington Post found some common themes in the men’s tales. Trust was a common issue, or rather distrust. One man wrote that in order to rebut his wife’s constant accusations that he was cheating on her, he photographed street signs on his 25-minute journey home from work, to establish a timestamp of the entire route. Finally, he said, he just left his wife.

Another man wrote that he knew it was over when he became indifferent to his wife’s “long and frequent infidelities.” When the anger stopped, the man realized he could focus on planning an end to his “toxic marriage.”

Men have long been accused of being bad at sharing their feelings. When one man revealed to his wife that he felt hopeless and depressed and described his condition “as an existential crisis,” however, his wife laughed in his face. The wife may have thought the man was joking, but the man was serious. “I realized I didn’t really matter to her,” he said.