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Can I keep my child from
seeing a parent who has covid?
How long should I be separated
before I can file for divorce?
These are all questions that we're
answering today about family law.
From now until 5:45,
attorney Sam Viscuso joins us today to help
you figure out what steps you need to take.
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Alright, so Sam,
let's get to some of the frequently
asked questions that are out there.
Here's the first one.
How long do couples have to be
separated to file for divorce
and what constitutes separation?
So here in North Carolina,
the law requires that partners be at
least that are married separate for
greater than a year before they qualify
to file for an absolute divorce.
So if you separate on December 25th,
then December 26th the following year,
you can go ahead and file for that divorce.
Now when you separate at least one of
the parties has to have an intent to
permanently separate from the other party.
And there must be a physical
separation before you can actually
file that with the court system.
And I
know we get a lot of questions
about that because for a lot of
money reasons, a lot of couples,
they just stay in the same house.
One persons in one room,
one persons in another room until
they can get things sorted out.
Does that count if you're still living
in the same house as separation?
It does not.
You need to physically separate.
We recommend a new address.
But no, you need to actually
separate from your partner. OK,
and do you have to show
evidence of that to the court?
Typically that's pretty easy to come by.
Usually these things don't end on great
terms, so one party is pretty happy
to get out as quickly as possible,
but if one party wants to
plead and say that hey,
we never actually separated and they
can provide documentation to the court,
it would be a defense to an
absolute divorce claim and let
me ask you another question.
Like one party may say I
want you out of the house.
How does that decide?
And if you leave the house,
does that make you?
Give up your your ability
to keep the house.
To keep the house.
No, not necessarily, but whether or not,
that's enough to start a separation period.
It really depends on the factual situation.
People can't separate for
a whole host of reasons.
Sometimes that may be related
to domestic violence.
Sometimes it may be some type of
marital issue, money incarceration.
There's countless things,
so if you're unsure about whether or
not a date was actually established,
I recommend actually reaching out
to an attorney and speaking with
them about your specific situation.
Alright, let's go on to this
frequently asked question.
It is about child custody
and the and the question is,
will filing A50B give me an
immediate child custody order
that overrides an existing order?
So the answer to that is it depends.
Typically you can potentially pursue a
temporary custody order that may override
an existing Chapter 50 order that's
already been established, but with a 50B.
What that requires is it's domestic violence.
So if there are allegations of
domestic violence, court can opt to
touch the custody issue as well.
But many judges,
especially locally or hesitant to do that.
In less, the alleged domestic violence
actually in curd or what a curd in front
of the minor child or minor children,
or if they were the victims
of such domestic violence.
So you can potentially get some type of
temporary order through a 50B action,
but it would only be temporary
in nature and some judges just
depending on the circumstances,
may decide hey we may enter in
order to keep the parties apart,
but we're going to leave
the kids situation as is
are we seeing this as a common
problem during this coronavirus time?
It has been really bad, especially locally,
with Covid hitting its peak last year.
The courthouse is shut down and so a
lot of the domestic cases and civil
cases weren't able to be heard by
judges but 50B courts were running
because of the immediate nature
and need to separate people that
are victims of domestic violence.
So we saw a huge uptick in
potential plaintiffs bringing.
Either false allegations or maybe
making a mountain out of a mole
Hill regarding allegations in
order to try to adjust the custody
situation without going through
what would be the proper channels.
And so it did become a big problem last year
with a with a sharp influx with 50B cases.
The other issue that we had is you had
partners staying at home in quarantine
together that didn't usually spend
that much time together and there's
a huge spike in domestic violence.
As a
result. I understand OK.
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