In a shift from traditional interviews, Jonathan Breeden, your host and renowned attorney, takes the hot seat. Tune into this unique episode of The Best of Johnson County Podcast and dive into the nuances of divorce law as Jonathan answers commonly asked questions to provide clarity and understanding about the divorce process.

Jonathan Breeden: hello and welcome to another episode of the Best of Johnson County podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden, and today we're going to do a different type of episode. Then we normally do most of the time we do episodes where I interview interesting community members, business leaders local politicians community leaders, stuff like that.

The traditional interview while I'll interview interesting business leaders and we'll do a few episodes where I will be asked questions and I will answer questions about custody, divorce, adoption, property distribution, alimony, stuff like that to give some people some information about family law and what the breed law office does for the citizens of Johnson County.

It has for over 23 years. So I don't know what these questions are going to be. Hopefully I will know the answers. We'll see how this goes. I think I probably do. And anyway, so great appreciate you coming and helping us out with this today. Of course. Absolutely. All right. You ready? I'm ready.

So you cannot file for the actual divorce, which says we are no longer married each other. For a year and a day and then if the divorce itself not the property not the kids But just the divorce is uncontested As most divorces are because most people don't fight about what the separation date is and so it's a no fault state You don't have to have reason for getting divorced The only way to get divorced is to live separate and apart for a year and a day with the intent of at least one of the parties, not both.

And that process, the property, the custody, the child support, all of that takes, can take a long time, can take a short time. It just depends on whether the people want to. Agree, do they want to be reasonable? Are they too emotionally involved to, to make a fair agreement for everybody? If everybody can kind of come to an agreement, I mean, we did an entire separation agreement that settled everything, but the divorce.

or longer, particularly in Wake County, where the court dates are really far out and they're getting to be that way in Johnston and Hornet as more people move into the area and we don't have any more court. So, the answer is, it depends. That's fair. Two, can I represent myself in a family law case?

You can, I don't know that I would advise it, but you absolutely can. I always tell people when they ask me that they're like, I'm like, should you do surgery on yourself? You know what I mean? And the answer is probably no, but no you absolutely can. And there are a ton of assets out there particularly in Wake County where they have a, sort of a pro se.

And the rest of the stuff is either resolved or pending. I would say that most people can do that themselves. The rest of it, I think you should have an attorney. If you don't have an attorney, the courts have to treat you as an attorney, which means they're going to hold you to the rules of evidence.

They'll have the correct They'll cite the right law, you can file them yourselves, so you're not going to be tossed out of court on some sort of motion to dismiss for an improper filing. On a technicality. On a technicality, you just go try the case yourself. So, understand that. But I think everybody should at least go talk to an attorney.

You know, for you represent yourself. I wrote a book divorce law in North Carolina. What you see to know the book is free. You can come by my office at 40 42 and pick it up. I'll mail it to you. If you call me, you can download it off of my website, or if you want it on your Kindle, you can buy it off of Amazon.

It, it depends. The law says, If one spouse is dependent and the other spouse is considered supporting, then yes, you would be entitled to some form of post separation support, which is the precursor to alimony. Post separation support also covers that one year and a day. Where you were waiting to file for the divorce and then alimony is often what you get after that.

And it can be for as long as the court would like it to be the definition of a dependent spouse is a spouse. Gotta have been married. This living together doesn't work. You actually have to have it to been married. And, is when one spouse after separation is unable to pay their reasonable living expenses on their income.

And if the dependent spouse that we just talked about, she's short 1, 000. The court can order the supporting spouse to take his thousand dollar surplus and pay the dispendants or the dependent spouse her 1, 000 short fall. One of the catches to all of this is what you think as either spouse is a reasonable bill is not what a judge may think is a reasonable bill.

Unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know, probably unfortunately, most Americans. 54 more percent are living paycheck to paycheck as a married couple, which means they don't have a ton of savings. There's not a lot extra. It costs anywhere from 40 to 50 percent more to live apart than it is together.

Yes. And no, yes. If there's enough money to go around and there's enough money between the two of you to support two households, but no, if it's not because they're not going to make the higher earning supporting spouse. Live under a bridge or in a box that person is going to get to go pay 1, 500 a month in rent.

All of these things are going to count. He's going to get haircuts before to determine what his reasonable bills are. Well, for most, in a lot of cases. When you do all of that, he or she, I shouldn't say just he, but oftentimes it's a he, doesn't have any money left over to pay spousal support. And the other side is almost always dependent and does not have the money to maintain the bills that they had.

And so that's where I think there's a misconception as to how you get it or what it's for. And for how long we don't have any child support or alimony charts, Raina in North Carolina, it's just whatever the judge decides, looking at the financial affidavits. And so we have these sort of unwritten rules, half the length of the marriage, stuff like that.

But. That's not a given the judge can do whatever they want to do. So they can do the entire longer than the length of the marriage, the entire length of the marriage, or maybe 12 months. Most judges now, because we have this unemployment rate of basically zero C post separation support and alimony is largely.

I mean, you can get trained. Thank you. There's also short term trainings like you know, my computer career and you know, varying people that do CNA test treatment. I mean, I mean CNA licensing and all of those types of things. So my experience has been that the amount has not been as high because.

The cost of living for the supporting spouse has gone up and the length of time I think has gotten shorter over time because it is much easier now than it was when I started 15 20 years ago for that spouse that may not have been in the workforce or not working full time or whatever to quickly get back in the force earn a full time salary and be able to pay their own bills.

Gotcha. Okay.

Jonathan Breeden: All right. So for what are the different types of custody? There are two different really types of custody. And I think people get them mixed up. And and I know it would be easy to do. And that's why I spent a couple of chapters of my book, Divorce Law in North Carolina, what you need to know about it.

And there's two types of physical custody. There's, well, there's three types of physical custody. There's primary, there's secondary and there's joint. So if one side has more time than the other side, significantly more time than the other side, they are the primary custodian. And you know, it, everybody's got a different rule.

The rule I try to use for primary is if the other, Parent has less than 10 nights a month. You are the primary custodian. I think if the other parent has more than 10 nights a month, even if it might not be the exact 15, 15 to 50, 50, to me, that is a joint custodial situation. And then there is. Secondary custody.

Legal custody is whether the party gets to help and make, help make decisions and be consulted on school, religion, different types of education, major medical decisions. Changing in the outward appearance of the child. I was in a hearing yesterday where the mom thought it was okay for the child to dye her hair purple.

The father was opposed to the girl dyeing her hair. That is the change in the outward appearance of the child. You wouldn't think much about it, but it is. And that is something the parents should have discussed before allowing, before the mother was going to allow the child to dye her hair purple.

There's joint and there's sole. The law presumes joint legal custody, says it right there in the law. And the court has to make very specific findings as to why joint legal custody, which is the presumption. This isn't physical custody. There is no assumption of joint physical custody. In North Carolina, there are in other states like Florida, but not in North Carolina, but on legal custody, there is a presumption that it should be joint legal custody.

These things the court can award one parent sole legal custody, but that is extremely rare in North Carolina. And the presumption is joint legal custody. And in that situation, the party should endeavor to agree on all of these things. And now, you know, with the rise of homeschooling, as the homeschooling numbers have completely exploded after COVID, we're starting to see that as more and more of an issue.

So, so that is those are the different types of custody. I think it's important for people to understand because people come in and say, I want sole custody. Well, sole custody is only really in legal custody and you have to have very specific reasons to have it but most of the time when somebody says they want sole custody What they're really looking for is primary physical custody And if that's what's in the best interest of the child and you can convince a judge that's in the child's best interest then that's what would happen unless the parent just agrees So I guess we got time for one more on this episode.

Yes what happens if your ex spouse fails to pay child support?

e. put you in jail for failing to pay your child support in willful violation of a valid court order. A lot of people that call me say that their ex spouse is not paying child support. What can they do? And they don't actually have an order. They've not been to court. They've not been to child support enforcement.

If they, if there's, if child support is in your separation agreement, and you both have signed it and it's been notarized, then you can file for breach of contract for violating the child's, for violating the separation agreement. But you can also still go to regular child support court and say. I need a child support order or ask the court to incorporate that part of the separation agreement so that you can get a court order that's a lot more enforceable than a separation agreement.

You can reach out to us at breed and farm. com. Make sure to like, or subscribe to the best of Johnston County podcast on however, you're listening to this podcast now, whether it be Apple podcasts, Spotify. YouTube so that you're notified about our future upcoming episodes of our podcast. We've got a lot of exciting guests, a lot of people that have a lot of good things to say about Johnston County and what we're doing.

That's the end of today's episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.