Charlotte Divorce Lawyer BlogThe North Carolina Court of Appeals recently decided a case relating to a motion to modify child custody custody in Cherry v. Thomas. The Mother’s child custody lawyer filed a motion to modify child custody. The trial court denied Mother’s motion to modify custody. The trial court held that there had been a substantial change in circumstances. However, it further held that Mother did not meet her burden of showing that the substantial change in circumstances actually affected the welfare of the minor child. The primary alleged substantial change related to the parents work schedules, they were North Carolina law enforcement officers. First they worked opposite shifts and days – the nonworking parent kept the minor child. Eventually, the work schedules changed to where both parents Monday through Friday during regular business hours. The Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s ruling.
Articles Posted in Child Custody
Grandparent Visitation and Custody in Charlotte, North Carolina
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of the most recent Census Bureau data, the number of children in the United States being raised by their grandparents rose sharply as the recession began. In all, approximately 7 million children live in households that include at least one grandparent. Of that number, 2.9 million are being raised primarily by their grandparents, a number up 16 percent from 2000, with a 6 percent surge from 2007 to 2008.
There are many reasons why grandparents are taking over child raising duties. Grandparents frequently report taking over when a single parent becomes overwhelmed with financial problems, is incarcerated, becomes ill, succumbs to substance abuse, or dies. High rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy as well as long overseas military deployments also factor into the increased dependence on grandparents.
According to the Pew Center, 34 percent of grandparent caregivers are unmarried, and 62 percent are women. Child-rearing by grandparents also varies by race, but the sharp rise in grandparent caregiving from 2007 to 2008 was among whites. However, overall, 53 percent of grandparent caregivers are white, 24 percent are black, and 18 percent are Hispanic.
Divorce Attorney Fees Paid by Divorce Insurance
Now you can buy divorce insurance to cover your divorce attorney fees. The average cost of an American divorce this year ranged from about $15,000 to $30,000. As a result, the North Carolina-based insurance company SafeGuard Guaranty Corporation is now selling a divorce insurance product called WedLock. A unit of WedLock runs insureds $16 per month and provides $1,250 to cover expenses such as legal proceedings. Insureds can buy multiple units, and for every year they keep their policy, SafeGuard will reward them with another $250 of coverage for each unit they own.
How does WedLock work? When a married couple files for divorce, the policyholders simply send in their divorce papers to receive cash from SafeGuard. To prevent spouses who are already planning a divorce from working the system, SafeGuard require at least 36 months from the effective date until spouses can claim their coverage.
On its website, SafeGuard provides a Divorce Cost Calculator and a Divorce Probability Calculator for those who are unable to decide whether they need to procure divorce insurance.
View and Print our Charlotte Divorce Attorney Blog Family Law Newsletter – Fall 2010
In this issue of our Charlotte Divorce Attorney Blog Family Law Newsletter, we take a look at the increasing popularity of Post-nuptial Agreements and the many topics which can be addressed by Post-nuptial Agreements. We also consider a couple issues relating to Father’s parental rights in child custody disputes. Finally, we discuss how a divorce can affect your Last Will and Testament and other similar legal documents.
Click here to view and print our Charlotte Divorce Attorney Blog Family Law Newsletter – Fall 2010:
CHARLOTTE DIVORCE LAWYER BLOG FAMILY LAW NEWSLETTER FALL 2010
International Child Custody Disputes
Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban child who became the star of an international custody battle a decade ago, released his first comments on the incident on the recent 10th anniversary of his return to his father in Cuba. He reported that he is happy to be in Cuba, and extended his gratitude to “a large part of the American public” for reuniting him with his father.
Gonzalez was only five years old when a fisherman found him floating off the coast of Florida in an inner tube on Thanksgiving Day of 1999. His mother and others fleeing Cuba drowned trying to reach American soil, while his father remained on the island. Gonzalez’s relatives in Miami refused to give him up after he was found, and Fidel Castro led marches in Cuba calling for his return home. U.S. immigration officials ruled that Gonzalez should be returned to Cuba, which created an outrage among Cuban-Americans. Armed federal agents raided the home of Gonzalez’s uncle in April of 2000 and seized Gonzalez from a closet to return him to Cuba.
Several American parents have waged notorious international custody battles in the years following Gonzalez’s ordeal. David Goldman of New Jersey very recently ended a highly publicized five-year child custody battle for his son, who was taken to his mother’s native Brazil for vacation and was never returned. Instead, Goldman’s wife divorced him and remarried a Brazilian man. When she died in 2009, her Brazilian husb\and moved to adopt the child. After five years of fighting, Goldman was permitted to return his son to American soil on Christmas Eve of 2009.
Divorce is Not Always Bad for the Children
Researchers from Montclair State University in New Jersey recently reported that, in marriages with a great deal of conflict, the notion of “staying together for the kids” might do more harm than good. The study, which was presented last year at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America, is being prepared for publication in a scientific journal.
To form their conclusions, the researchers analyzed the results of a national survey of nearly 7,000 married couples and their children living in the United States. The parents were initially surveyed in 1987 and asked questions to gauge their level of marital conflict at home, including how often they disagreed over money, household tasks, the in-laws, and multiple other hot-button issues. Then, between 1992 and 1993, both parents and children were surveyed, with researchers assessing how the parental conflict changed over the years, including whether the couple divorced. The children were surveyed a final time, as adults in 2001 and 2002, and were asked about their level of happiness and conflict in their own current relationships.
The results of the study indicate that children of parents who fight a lot yet stay married experience more conflict in their own marital relationships than children of parents who fight and get divorced. Researchers indicate that the results show that children do suffer short-term issues during crisis periods when their parents divorce, but they usually recover in the long run. Constant exposure to parental strife is most likely what causes children’s future relationships to suffer and sometimes end. In contract, parental happiness did not appear to affect the children’s adult relationships; children of happily married parents did not necessarily grow up to have happy marriages themselves.
Charlotteans Push for Changes in Child Custody Laws
Many Charlotte fathers – and a few mothers – are advocating for shared parenting time after couples divorce. A local group called Kids Need 2 Parents (KN2P) held a rally at Marshall Park on June 12 in an attempt to make “shared parenting” the presumed standard in custody law.
Although the current legal standard in child custody decisions is whatever arraignment is found to be “in the child’s best interest,” the President of KN2P, Sheila Peltzer, insists that the reality of custody battles is that the mother wins custody 85% of the time. Under KN2P’s proposed plan for shared custody, each child would start out splitting his or her time 50/50 between parents.
Members of KN2P believe that the Tender Years Doctrine, a common law theory that presumed that children of a young age are better suited to live with their mothers rather than fathers, is an unspoken bias in the law that remains today. They claim that children’s right to equal access to both parents is “the civil rights fight of this century.”
Medical Marijuana Can Cost Parents in Child Custody Disputes
Fourteen of our fifty states currently approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes in some form. However, because the use of marijuana is still illegal under federal law, its role in child custody disputes has become a subject of great debate in recent years. Although medical marijuana laws can protect patients from criminal charges, they typically do not prevent judges and guardians ad litem from considering a parent’s use of marijuana as a factor in custody decisions.
Most often, the judicial system will side with parents who seek to keep their children away from marijuana. With some other painkiller medications, judges can require tests to establish how much of a drug a patient has in his system at any given time; however, because treatment providers cannot prescribe specific dosages of marijuana without violating federal law, it is currently unclear what constitutes an “appropriate” level of marijuana in a patient’s system.
Medical marijuana activists in several states, including Washington, California, and Colorado, state that they have been getting more inquiries recently from patients involved in custody disputes, as the number of patients using marijuana for medical purposes increases. According to the Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, D.C., only two states with medical marijuana laws specify that patients will not lose custody or visitation rights, unless the patient’s use of marijuana endangers the child or is contrary to the child’s best interests.
Charlotte Dads Feeling the Same Pressure as Moms when it Comes to Family Obligations
This year, Father’s Day marked a new milestone for fathers across the country: they are becoming just as stressed as mothers. Last week, Boston College released a study called “The New Dad,” which suggested that new fathers are facing a subtle bias in the workplace that fails to recognize their new family responsibilities and obligations. This workplace bias assumes that mothers, rather than fathers, will be most affected by the addition of children to the family.
However, this research highlights the new challenges facing fathers: they must navigate a workplace that is typically reluctant to give them time off for family reasons. Several studies show that men, compared with their female colleagues, are less likely to take advantage of benefits like flexible schedules and family leave. The Boston College study found that when men needed to take their children to the doctor or pick them up from daycare, they tended to do so in a stealthy fashion rather than ask for a more flexible work arrangement.
Thus, fathers are now facing a social dilemma that is more often faced by mothers – finding the balance between being a good parent and a good worker. Fathers also seem more unhappy than mothers with the balancing act: In dual-income families, 59 percent of fathers report some level of “work-life conflict,” compared with about 45 percent of women, according to a 2008 report from The Families and Work Institute in New York.
Tough Child Custody Decisions: What Happens to the Children?
A judge in Charlotte will soon have to decide the fate of two siblings who recently witnessed their father murder the rest of their family in their home. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police report that the father of the children, Kenny Chapman, suffocated his wife and their 1-year-old daughter, then stabbed his wife’s daughter from a previous relationship. Chapman’s surviving 11-year-old daughter claims that he spared her and her 2-year-old brother because they were his first-born of each sex, and therefore they were special. The surviving children lived in the home for two weeks after the murders, and the daughter did not contact any relatives or act distraught, in an effort to avoid the same fate at her father’s hands.
The two children had the same father, but different mothers, which is complicating their case. The paternal grandparents want to be awarded custody of both children, but the maternal grandmother only wants custody of the boy, as she believes that she has a significant connection to him, and she is of no relation to the girl. Due to everything the children have endured together, the paternal grandparents believe that the children belong together. If the children are separated, the grandparents hope that arrangements can be made for them to see one another on a regular basis.