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Inspired by the song 12 Days of Christmas, in this episode, we break down the 12 myths of divorce from our experienced legal team to help you better understand divorce and your options in the state of North Carolina.
Your no bullsh$t guide to divorce with experienced attorneys from New Direction Family Law and guests and professionals who have been there. Unfiltered discussions to help you move from victim to victorious and from bitter to better.
Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Stephenson.
Sarah: I'm Sarah Henke. Thanks for joining us today.
Elizabeth: We have our favorite male attorney in the whole world. Chris, let's go.
Sarah: running joke is whenever I go to court, people always mess up my last name and there's a judge that I'm in front of constantly. My name is spelled Henke, H I N K on every pleading and everything we file. And then she always calls me Sarah Hicks.
Elizabeth: I'm not sure. I like warm feels about that, but
Sarah: it happened before he even came to join the firm.
Chris: And
Sarah: it's if you don't correct. Someone in time can you correct them after
Elizabeth: you're talking about it now. [00:01:00]
Sarah: So she's leading the bench or at least a family court. So I don't know, maybe the next one we'll get it right now.
Elizabeth: Anyways. Anyway,
Sarah: I digress.
Elizabeth: We always do.
Sarah: Today we have a fun topic, so we want to.
Bring Christmas into the mix. Even though I learned that this is not going to air until after Christmas, today we're in the theme of the Christmas spirit, the 12 days of Christmas. And I don't know what day we're on now. How many days Jen? Eight
Jen: next Friday.
Sarah: Yeah. Jen is going to help us with this. So we're doing the 12 myths of divorce.
Elizabeth: There could be a hundred of them, but we narrowed it to 12.
Sarah: Yes, people have our consults with us and we hear them say something wild or off the wall. And then you just hear it over and over.
And I was like, Oh, people just think this way,
Elizabeth: I know he was served with separation papers. Really interesting.
Jen: Let's talk about that.
Elizabeth: It's not real.
Sarah: So with that,
Jen: we will get started, I guess the first one, technically isn't divorced, but it's in the family law realm. So myth number one. And Sarah, you and I have done a Facebook live about this.
Prenups are [00:02:00] only for the rich and famous.
Sarah: Yeah. When we all be so lucky to have them, then if that were the case, because we'd all be rich and famous, but no, that's not true.
We should all have pronounced
Elizabeth: agree. We should all have prayed to be rich and prenup.
Sarah: You did. I did. So did that work in on the tail end of things.
Elizabeth: But other than that
Sarah: this is starting out lovely. But no prenups are great for kind of, it's like an insurance for your marriage and, prove being that we are all employed in family law area and are busy and have lots of clients is that divorce happens. You never think about it when you get married, but it happens.
And. And way to do it too, is you're thinking about your finances and you don't necessarily need to have wealth to begin with, but you can plan for what, if you do create wealth during your marriage. And if you separate where's that wealth going to go. And do you, at that time, when you're all emotional and your separation want to fight it out, or do you want to think about that when you're clear-headed and you're entering into a relationship, talk about finances, put it on some [00:03:00] paper, how you want things divided.
Elizabeth: I was was all nerves and second marriage. So that made sense to me because we each wanted to take care of our kids. I think where it gets a little sticky is when it's your first marriage and you're all about in this romantic sort of stay, Oh, then you don't really love me everything's together. How do you talk to clients to say this is a good thing?
It doesn't mean you're good.
Chris: And that's the whole thing with prenups is they can't be. Yup.
Elizabeth: Anticipation of the word.
Chris: But, and don't get us wrong. They are for the rich and famous too, especially. But yeah, when they come in, what I found a lot of times is they come in and they're both informed a lot of the time.
It's not coming in to say, Hey, should I get this Most people have done the research on that, but really the two issues I look for are children from past relationships and businesses, especially a family business. If you're in a business with your dad and your dad doesn't really want your spouse coming in and taking over well
Elizabeth: let's talk about how could it spouse do that if it's your business and you got married how would your spouse have any part of that?[00:04:00]
Chris: Any kind of growth or new equipment or, especially when I look at. Construction, gravel, companies like that with big equipment, those are assets, a lot of times it's just, this guy sells stuff. And so the businesses think
Sarah: about Bezos
from Amazon. I'm guessing they didn't have a prenup.
Elizabeth: No, just woman in the world, he's working out of his garage.
Sarah: So they didn't think, Oh, we're going to be rich and famous, but they turned out to be
Elizabeth: so playing the devil's advocate and bam, a new wife and the first wife, then why would you as my future husband not want me to be a part of that?
What would you say to me? If I was you're coming to you to say, I don't want this.
Chris: Prenups a contract, no different than any other, two people. So you don't want it, you don't sign it, and if it doesn't, if it's not going to benefit, you don't do it. Don't do it exactly.
Elizabeth: A lot of people, I always get the women that come to say they've been presented with one, two weeks before the.
Marriage, which makes my red flag go off. If you're going to do [00:05:00] this and be a friend, then be upfront about it. Let's talk about that
Sarah: guys who are like, I need one, two weeks before the marriage
Elizabeth: ended up. Why did you not think about
Sarah: that? Does she know? Let's talk to her. Let's make sure that she is aware this is coming.
So it's situation with him. I run into in the long run, but I liked them. I didn't really like them. , It's all about going ahead and saying what the law is. A lot of the times, and people worry about inheritance and gonna say, okay inheritance is separate anyways, but it's just taking something for you to fight about later.
Elizabeth: Fight about that. I'm in a huge case about inheritance right now, too, that the loss has a bit, your inheritance it's separate, but then you got to go prove it. But I have it in a prenup and I've listed it up. Then I don't have to do that.
Sarah: Exactly. And you save a lot of money on the tail end. I agree. A prenup is so much cheaper than hiring an attorney for an actual divorce.
Elizabeth: So what are things you can't put in a prenup?
Chris: Child support
Elizabeth: alimony, correct
Sarah: custody.
Chris: Yeah.
Elizabeth: So it's really more about properties
Chris: only about property. And that's it, you [00:06:00] can't do the other things. It's not valid to do it, but the property like Sarah was saying, that's a good thing to do because then if it ends, what the deal is,
Sarah: and that's what I can do.
Some stuff with spousal support.
Elizabeth: It can't be against, you can't put them into poverty so that they're on the getting welfare or whatever. It can't
Sarah: wise in that you can touch on it, right? Yeah. Just a little deviate, a little bit. Not a lot, but New York has some really interesting.
Marital laws and prenups. So just, you can do a lot of crazy stuff with alimony in certain States. So we're speaking about North Korea, we're talking here
Elizabeth: cause alienation of affection. So
Sarah: we have our own crazy. We
Elizabeth: have our own crazy through.
Sarah: Alright. Number two, Jen.
Jen: I'll just say there to wrap up prenups, being someone that is divorced, but didn't have kids.
I will have a Brita. I don't have, I don't own a business nor do I have children, but going into the next marriage, I feel like if you're not okay with at least considering it, then what is your reason behind, anyway, so yeah, prenups for the wind. Okay. Number two. [00:07:00] Most divorces are nasty, drawn out battles in court.
Elizabeth: I would say most. Some, and they're horrible. I'm just telling you they're horrible for us. They're horrible for the client and they're horrible for the children. That's all. Just horrible, but sometimes you don't have any choice.
Sarah: Yeah. So let's think about this. There's some people who do just go online and do their own separation agreements and there's good things and bad things.
We see the bad side of it, but there's people who do it and somehow do their own separation agreement. And we never hear from them. We don't come in contact with those people. I don't know those people cause they wouldn't be our clients. Correct.
Chris: I think we're the worst people to answer this question because I think 90% of people just do their own thing and they never get to us, maybe for their actual divorce, but the separation, the custody,
Elizabeth: I love all the divorces in North Carolina and what our courts, we think it's overwhelming, but it's not.
Yeah.
Sarah: And there's the people who are able to discuss things, have an agreement. Go to an attorney and attorney drafts it. Sometimes the other person might have a couple of changes, but fairly [00:08:00] simple, super easy able to co-parent if their kids are nice too. So there's just different levels. And it depends on people's personalities.
Is there a mental health issues finances to fight about? So it can happen, but most are not drawn out in court and it might start out nasty and end well, or maybe not well, but not end up in court.
Elizabeth: But what I've found is people are all ratted up at the beginning. It's and I can certainly understand that, but then three months down the road in my sort of settled down and they're more reasonable and you get them to mediation, I can settle your case 99% of the time.
And it's always better. We can do that.
Sarah: Sure. Sometimes it's not the best to go in heavy and litigate right away.
Elizabeth: No, but then you got, but there are every attorney has her own personality. And, you may be in a case where your client doesn't want to litigate, but then the other party has someone who comes out of the box doing that.
So then you're on the, you have to meet them where they are, unfortunately.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think most is not the right word. Now, the ones that are the ones that get all the [00:09:00] attention, they're the fun ones to hear about. And that's why we, our great guests for a cocktail party, the other ones.
Nobody wants to hear that story. We signed some papers and took it to the court.
Sarah: Yeah. They're both satisfied
Elizabeth: and get along. Great. And
Sarah: they share holidays. Yeah.
Elizabeth: Podcasts that's
Chris: now. And there's so many ways to work these things out in a peaceful way and move forward.
Sarah: Yeah. Some people just aren't peaceful people.
Elizabeth: Sure. Yeah. And sometimes there are perfectly legitimate reasons for not being
Sarah: peaceful people,
Elizabeth: especially because you didn't get a prenup and now we've got to fight over the property, and that's a legitimate
Sarah: one. Person's angry. Vindictive doesn't want to provide any support, even though, even if they have an attorney, you are telling them to provide support.
Elizabeth: Let me just have that issue today. Yeah. Somebody should be paying support, but they're not. And they've got the ability to do it until
Sarah: you get into court for a judge to tell them to do it. They're not going to do it
Elizabeth: right. So I would say no most are not, but what do you say?
Sarah: Yeah, the [00:10:00] majority are not now.
Jen: I would just say from the initiating point, whenever new clients are coming to us, I would say more times than not they're initiating services for a separation agreement, which is non-litigation. And that's where I start with the hope that we can keep it out of court that way too. So great.
All right. Number three. If your spouse cheats on you, you will get primary custody of the children
Elizabeth: and
Sarah: that's not
Elizabeth: what they Excel.
Chris: Yeah. I tell people all the time that the worst husband can be the best father
Sarah: and vice versa, just because
Chris: you're a terrible husband. Doesn't mean you're a good father, not a good time.
Elizabeth: I agree with that though, heartedly, and you got to make that connection. I always say if he's out with his girlfriend, he's going to have the kids and that's an issue, right?
I know it's hurtful for you. But not for your kids.
Sarah: Yeah. The only time that it's going to come into play is if your spouse is seeing someone, then developed a relationship with them, and this person is not a good person to be around the kids. So that just going to go back to any adult that's around the kids that has like an alcohol drug [00:11:00] problem, but generally if you're in court and it's in a custody hearing
Elizabeth: the
Sarah: judge, isn't going to want to hear that.
They're going to look at you and say you should be focused on their kids, but instead you're focused on what your husband and your wife,
Elizabeth: that's hard, man. Get me in the heart, but the knife in there and then tell me the meaning.
Sarah: It's tough. That's what I say, go to counseling.
Cause you're going to need to deal with that. It's a process and it's totally valid, right? So we have to separate those issues. And this is what the court's going to look at and focus on the kids. And what's going to work for you and your husband, wife,
Elizabeth: right? And most people, most clients understand that.
I think. I have the hardest problem with client two are separated for a short period of time. And then the other party gets a significant other and is around the kids. That's more of a problem, I think, than anything for me,
Sarah: girlfriend out a lot. I just have a new girlfriend, like every other month,
Elizabeth: the boyfriend. That's not good for the kids.
Sarah: It's not,
Chris: especially when they're, If somebody is dating around, that's fine. But when the kids start coming into it or, you've got your, your weekend visit and, [00:12:00] girlfriend stay in there and then girlfriend be two weeks later.
Sarah: So
Elizabeth: that's what I say.
If you're on three days off, go see that person on three days focused the new kids the other time.
Sarah: This comes up as separation agreements. You want to put a provision in that you can't introduce the kids to extend advocate other women until you date three or six months in someone violates it.
And then my client says what can we do about it? What can we do about it? Realistically
Elizabeth: mapping, you could file a contempt, which is saying to the court they didn't do what was in the order.
Sarah: This is a separation agreement. So
Elizabeth: breach of contract, but that will don't
Sarah: do anything. How do you remedy?
Elizabeth: You can file a custody order, but it's not gonna make any difference to a child. It's just not, it's tough. I can't get people the satisfaction that they want a lot of times. Yeah. I feel frustrated about that.
Chris: Yeah. And I, the frustrates me too, but I, I tell myself that's just not a reasonable expectation and that, we can only do what we can do and I can tell people all day long, and that's what we do with a legal team too, is, reassure them that we understand.
Sarah: Yeah
Elizabeth: I don't get it,
Sarah: but I can get to. And you just hope I tell them I will, [00:13:00] hopefully one day you'll both come to a point where you can trust the other person to be responsible about the kids and be a good parent. I know. I just leave it at that.
Elizabeth: Oh, resilient. They, if they have a strong attachment to your child, this other person is not, is going to make zero difference in that relationship.
I think it's more about that parent being insecure about their relationship with their own child, that somebody is going to come in and they won't love him as much. Which is that
Sarah: insecurity is hard.
Elizabeth: Yeah. I love this person and now he's left and I don't want to leave with, to lose my child kind of thing.
Sarah: And again, go to therapy. Yeah. What's number four
Jen: therapy.
Elizabeth: You got to keep us on track. Let's go off
Jen: the rails. How nearly impossible that.
Sarah: All right.
Jen: Number four, there has to be fault to be able to get a divorce in North Carolina means somebody's got to do something.
Elizabeth: No, and it's funny when you see California is irreconcilable differences.
No, you just got to be separated. What a year
Sarah: and file. So we were aware, no fault divorce state.
Elizabeth: What does that mean to her?
Sarah: You don't have to have fault. You just have to be separated for, like you said, a [00:14:00] year and a day. So you can file on the day after you've been separated for a year and separated, meaning you live under two, two different roofs, right?
And that can get as simple as it sounds. I can get muddy too, but we're not going to go into
Chris: that. And only one of you has to have the intent to be separated, even if you don't like it and your spouse wants to separate and moves out. 366 days.
Elizabeth: I used to go to divorce court. I don't go. I do divorces on Fridays and wake County.
There were always be the opposing party in the back. No, I object to this divorce and I still, it was very dramatic.
Sarah: I'm like, it's so fun. We used to go out and celebrate your divorce on a Friday. That's exactly what I. Tourist Fridays are great, North Carolina, wasn't always a no fault state.
I don't, I think most States were at one point or another. You had to show some kind of fall in a lot of times it made it harder for the woman to get a divorce.
Elizabeth: My God, we didn't have the vision of property till the seventies. We were a little behind the times, but no, no fault in North Carolina.
Jen: Number five divorced [00:15:00] without kids is so much easier.
Elizabeth: Oh, no pain is pain. My friend, if somebody says, I don't love you anymore, once they leave, it still sucks.
Sarah: There's dogs.
Elizabeth: I would like to lose my mind.
Chris: Don't talk to me about dogs. It's absolutely not necessarily easier without kids. I certainly have clients whose kids focus them on making this easier. Certainly people want to say, we want to make this easy on the kids, it sucks, but we're going to do what we can to make it easy on them.
So a lot of times that focuses them in on, getting, the easy way, if it's, just a couple and somebody slept with somebody who's best friend now that's going to be way worse.
Elizabeth: Yeah. It hurts.
Sarah: There's a lot of different aspects to separation divorce and you can't really compare yourself to other
Elizabeth: people.
I hope people hear that it's like pain is pain. It doesn't matter. It, what I went through. It doesn't matter where you went, it doesn't matter what your best friend went through. Yeah. It's personal to you and if it hurts for you and it's hard and we'll [00:16:00] help you get through,
Sarah: and everyone has their own path, it's not going to look the same as your friend that divorced or separated, it's going to be different.
It's going to be for you and for your spouse that you're separating from, it's going to be your own way.
Elizabeth: Exactly. No that took me eight,
Sarah: never six.
Jen: I give this one all the time or the intake call. You have to file separation paper, insert, separation papers, insert air quotes, to initiate divorce.
What our separation papers guys give
Elizabeth: anything to know where that started.
Chris: And
Jen: maybe other States,
Elizabeth: I don't know. I don't know, but no, the answer is no it's like Sarah said, but I'll, if you walk out the door with the intent to be separated permanently, you are separated. Legally separated in that year and a day starts ticking.
It doesn't have anything to do with the property, the kids or spousal support, but you're separated for all intents and purposes, whether that person wants to be or not, you don't have to be served with anything. You don't have to have a separation agreement, you can go from, go to pass, get $200, get a divorce [00:17:00] and you're
Sarah: dead.
Elizabeth: What are the consequences? Would you does it,
Chris: you hear this abandonment question all the time. I think we may have that on here somewhere.
Jen: into myth number set, Chris, this is directed towards you. I can't move out without an agreement in place because that's abandonment.
Chris: No, not necessarily. It
Elizabeth: can be.
Sarah: That depends. It depends
Chris: what my favorite is. It isn't
it can be, abandonment is a factor for alimony as a marital misconduct factor, but 99% of the time you're going to separate and you're going to separate.
Sarah: Yeah. So I always explain abandonment more. So is if someone's a supporting spouse, it's like really making all the money, all the bills and they just up and walk out the door, move to Hawaii.
You never hear from them again. They're totally, off the face of the earth and that [00:18:00] person abandoned and you, the financials, that's abandonment, not you just discussing, wanting to separate. And after two weeks of talking about it, you can leave. But.
Elizabeth: He threatened me that I abandoned him. If I leave.
It's no.
Sarah: Yeah. And I hate it when people are fighting a lot and they are hoping to separate and they're trying to work out a separation agreement or something, and they're still living together, call it a day. Someone needs to move out.
Elizabeth: Yeah, there are all sorts of,
Chris: I had one.
Yeah. Couple months. A couple years back now, everything seems like months. My, my client was an elderly lady and her husband was working on the road, so he said, but he's living with a woman in Myrtle beach and my client had no idea until she went to a family reunion and her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren told her they saw it on Facebook.
Because she had no, she was in her
Elizabeth: eighties.
Chris: She said she's at home paying the mortgage and out of her social security and stuff. And he's. [00:19:00] Down in Myrtle beach with another lady that's abandoned.
Sarah: Yeah. I would
Elizabeth: classify that as the bandit,
Chris: but yes. Or walking out the door from a bad relationship and,
Elizabeth: and I always say, it's, it's like he made your life so intolerable that you had to leave, so it's not abandonment and you'd have to take care of yourself.
You got to say, Nope, I'm done. I'm out of here. I don't want people to worry about. Freak out about abandonment.
Jen: That's why it's so important to talk to an attorney to find out if it is a baby.
Elizabeth: Thanks, JB.
Jen: All right, moving on to number eight, the eighth myth. If we have
Sarah: equal
Jen: custody, there won't be child support.
Sarah: That's not true. Maybe
Elizabeth: it depends. Or what was the, what was it, Chris?
Sarah: In theory it can be true, but it's more than just custody time. That's taken into consideration
Elizabeth: distinct you're up here and he's down here. There's going to be some.
Sarah: Yeah. And I have to explain that to people. They come in and say if I create a 50 50, they won't pay me any child support.
[00:20:00] I'm like he makes 150,000 and you make thirties, right? Yeah. There's going to be some child support.
Elizabeth: Do y'all have this, like people, there are some clients. That one 50 50, because they know that will
Sarah: sway,
Elizabeth: oh yeah. If you get a hundred and put us at 123 overnight, then we're going to schedule B and you have to pay less child support.
Sarah: Can you talk to an attorney about that? About all that.
Chris: Then you can see it in negotiations too. Oh, I know you offered this, but my client needs one more night. Every two weeks. I'm like, Oh yeah, I can do the math too
Sarah: banks.
Chris: Yeah. And then you throw in, daycare and health insurance and no, it's not just.
Yeah, 50 50 is going to be equal
Elizabeth: and we do it on guidelines. It to what your income is, what your health, what you pay for health insurance and what you pay for an for work-related childcare. And I tell people don't fight. If y'all are W2's. Everybody knows that everybody makes. Why are we fighting over child support?
Yeah. Cause they're just going to put the plug the numbers in and go to court.
Chris: It's a math problem.
Elizabeth: It is a math problem.
Sarah: It is exactly. And the guidelines [00:21:00] generally with the state is trying to do is what would these kids have if they had lived in the same household still, what would they have access to financially?
And what would that provide for them as far as extracurriculars close? So you have two different houses. It's now. And let's figure out how to make the households somewhat, even for the kids' sake, because you don't want kids to go live in a mansion with dad and they get access to all these amazing things.
And mom's living in a shack. That's going to create Tuscany tensions as well. So there's a point behind child support other than just paying for the children. And there's a whole other side of it, as far as taking care of the kids mentally, physically, and loving,
Elizabeth: and keeping them in that same sort of.
Lifestyle that they've been accustomed to,
Chris: man. I think child support a lot of times just not wanting to give money to your
Sarah: Oh, clear,
Elizabeth: they want to make sure I want to put it in a bank account and I want to see what they're doing with it. No, that's never going to happen.
Chris: I tell clients all the time, you've got primary custody, what he's paying is not going to support that child.
And I tell clients on the other side, You're complaining about how much you have to pay, but I can tell [00:22:00] you from experience, you're going to pay a lot more if that child lives here. It's not enough.
Elizabeth: You trust the other party to make it, they're going to do what's right. For their kids, right?
Yeah. Yeah, maybe I'm just Pollyanna. I don't know. I assume people are going to do the right thing.
Sarah: You should
Jen: know better. You do at that point. All right. Number nine. We're going to have to think Vegas, I think here, but we get this call during like,
Sarah: when people are calling,
Jen: when people are calling about services and they say we've only been married for a week or a month, or it's very short period of time.
It was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened. I need to get an enrollment. Let's talk about the nomad here. You just get an, a nomad because you made them a thing
Elizabeth: now.
Chris: Absolutely not. And I told Sarah, I would take over this. Did my research. I got about. An hour and a half year.
Elizabeth: Okay. For your moms, you can have a
Chris: no, a no-man's are super weird and they're super rare. [00:23:00] Basically. Everything gets, am trying not to get too into the weeds, a marriage can be void or it can be voidable basically, if your marriage was illegal to begin with Interestingly. Yeah, you're not married. One of the things is incest.
So anything in North Carolina closer than your first cousin. Which
Elizabeth: does not. It was third cut
Chris: first cousin. You cannot marry your double first cousin. Two brothers
can't marry two sisters and then have kids who get married. That would be a double first cousin.
Elizabeth: Law school Elwen when you did the trees. Yeah. I remember that.
Chris: Yeah. If you marry someone closer than your first cousin, that's void. Okay.
Sarah: They did that, but
Elizabeth: Oh, but it's only void one of the people challenges it.
Exactly. If I don't say anything in my first cousin, that's
Chris: double first cousins, [00:24:00]
Sarah: then you're
Elizabeth: good.
Chris: Anything illegal, you, this one's in an oldie, but Marry someone thinking that they're pregnant and then they don't have a child within 10 months. You can have that an old, anything that's based on fraud,
Elizabeth: broad.
But it's,
Chris: I've never done one.
Elizabeth: It's a big to me.
Sarah: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah. They filed a complaint for, they were, they got married in Hawaii. They filed the complaint to divorce with her other husband in Texas. The complaint was filed, but my client, former client, and this person got married prior to the divorce being entered.
So it's big. So technically big of me. So the
Chris: marriages,
Sarah: yeah. Which is good for one person as far as like finances, but am I worried
Elizabeth: about that? The equitable distribution issue and his retirement, and now that's gone because they were never married.
Chris: Exactly. And that's what a Noman is just saying you were never, ever married.
Elizabeth: And what is it? There's mental health. There's mental disease. And then there's impotence, right?
Chris: And now the impotence one is a,
Elizabeth: I don't even want to [00:25:00] put on evidence.
Chris: Yeah. It's not, it's not worth it by the time you could, by the time you could get an expert in there and testify to the medical records and all that, you might as well just wait your year and pay your $255 and leave
Sarah: know.
Elizabeth: That's crazy.
Sarah: I know mitts are weird, but in some States they do have this length of time and, yeah,
Elizabeth: that's bad. I think if you go six months down the road, I made a mistake. Yeah. Who cares
Sarah: like Britney Spears, right? Didn't she get married in Vegas and an old it
Elizabeth: like in the debt? Yeah, exactly.
Sarah: Yeah.
Vegas has
Jen: got to have lenient
but in North Carolina married four weeks, I waited for a year. Yup. Yup. All right. Number 10. I can't get the divorce because my spouse won't agree to it or sign.
Elizabeth: I think we sorta touched on that.
Sarah: Yeah. Then we just takes one person not to want to be married to you
Elizabeth: because I [00:26:00] don't have to sign anything. You don't sign anything to be separated?
Sarah: Nope. Okay. Just be separated for a year and a day. Yeah.
Chris: We'll take them their papers.
Elizabeth: That's it that's
Sarah: separation
Jen: payment,
Elizabeth: that
Sarah: separation papers, they can come to court on a Friday prior to the judge about it,
Jen: but it might be virtual these days.
Elizabeth: I've been divorced quite a while, but there's a lot of intricacies about divorce.
Everybody gets like thrown. Nope, come back next week.
Sarah: Same procedure. I think it's cause the judges there are, there's an
Elizabeth: issue like it's very important that your divorce is done correctly. Correct. So I would say yes, we have a divorce kit down at the wake County courthouse. But talk to an attorney before you
Sarah: do it, you might mess it up.
Yeah. And if you've got a wedding coming up and it's pretty important
Elizabeth: and I, gosh, that happens so often you can walk across to the, get married, and that's how I'll never remember. I was getting off the elevator one day in divorce court and. It's cute. It's old couple. And I'm sitting here with another attorney and they said, would you be our witnesses at our wedding?
It's we're divorce attorneys. I'm three of us to do that for you. But it was very affirming. [00:27:00]
Jen: She like will, let me advise you of your rights.
Sarah: Her console,
Elizabeth: but you just wouldn't go.
Chris: I have a prenup in my pocket.
Sarah: Yeah. Sign
Jen: here on the dotted line. Don't worry about it.
Sarah: Actually segues
Jen: perfectly into number 11, Chris, I think you posed this one. So we'll throw this one over to you. Myth. Number 11, my ex will sign his or her rights away.
Chris: Not possible.
What rights?
Sarah: Parental rights. Parental rights. Yeah, caveat. We were talking about the parental rights here. So if you have a child together, say, A kid with my husband or we were never even married, but he doesn't come around and he doesn't really pay child support that much. And I'm just like, you know what?
I come to you, Elizabeth. And I'm like, I healed, he told me he was just going to sign his rights away and I just won't get child support anymore. Can you just sign his rights away, sign a piece of paper
Elizabeth: we can because the state wants somebody on the hook for that child support. But if there's somebody waiting in the wings I ha I haven't this lovely case that I've had forever and there's a step-parent adoption waiting until we had to terminate parental rights.
So there's somebody [00:28:00] waiting in the wings to adopt a child and absolutely he can sign them away and do the right thing. But if there's nobody out there, yeah,
Chris: you've got to, you can relinquish your rights, but there has to be a termination proceeding against you. And that has to be legitimate. You can't just file it.
Yeah, because he wants to do it. A judge is still going to look at this before they sign up.
Elizabeth: I would not do that to get out
Sarah: all the time.
Elizabeth: So just off topic but I want to change the name. He know he's not around. I want to do this when I'm wanting to give him my name and I hate this law personally, but you have to have that father.
Consent to do that. They're not involved at all.
Sarah: There's a few caveats. And it would be, I think if there was a sexual crime against the actual child or the child's sibling, you don't have to have the consent. Otherwise you get, you can show up abandonment, right? You have to have a hearing. I actually have one of these name changes right now of a minor and it is hard.
I just think that
Elizabeth: personally, I just think that's wrong. If you're not gonna step up and meet the child's father, then. [00:29:00] You didn't have your name, but
Sarah: no. And there's other scenarios where they done in the
Elizabeth: legislature and I'm not a judge. Nobody asked me
Jen: well, and I'll just say that, cause we, you touched on this Elizabeth, but we have had people call fathers saying, Oh, I just want to give my rights away.
And I'm like, first of all, I'm immediately judging you. Second of all, you can't do that. Also to the flip side, have you guys ever, cause I'm thinking back to all of our intake calls and I don't think I've ever had. A father call wanting to terminate parental rights of a mother. Have you guys ever had that?
Chris: I have,
Elizabeth: but have you, I haven't, I've had emergency custody where they didn't where there was some issues going on, but no, I never have had that.
Chris: And I have, and I had a mother asked me what she had to do to sign her rights away this week.
Elizabeth: That would break my heart. I don't want to prejudice
Chris: it's was hard, but no I've had that a termination and a lot of times it's a stepmother adoption.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. The stepparent adoption going on right now. And it's [00:30:00] just hard. I think
Sarah: I have had all women, clients for termination so far think about it.
Elizabeth: That's true.
Sarah: So far.
Elizabeth: Interesting.
Chris: That's probably the majority.
Jen: [00:31:00] Moving on to myth. Number 12, even though we're separated, my spouse is sleeping with someone else.
So that's still an affair, right?
Elizabeth: Correct. Legally that's correct. Would call it at a fair
Sarah: but mostly it is not.
Elizabeth: It is, it's a crime.
Sarah: It's a crime. Okay. So there's criminal world. Could you
Elizabeth: imagine the da coming in inciting you? That's what I tell people. Just be discreet.
Sarah: Yeah. They don't enforce that law. We still use it when we get to plead the fifth and discovery responses because it's still a crime in North Carolina, which is a good and bad thing,
Elizabeth: because it doesn't help you shuttle things.
If I know that you're sleeping with someone and I'm already heard that you left me, please, don't put that in my face. Cause I'm not going to sign anything you've put in front of me.
Sarah: That's true.
Elizabeth: Be nice.
Sarah: A lot of people ask we've been separated for nine months. Can I date? Sure.
Chris: Yeah,
Sarah: absolutely.
So they can't sleep with them.
Elizabeth: They [00:32:00] can sleep with them.
Sarah: Just don't
Jen: put it on, but
Chris: we can
Elizabeth: put it on.
Chris: We can not legally recommend that you commit an antiquated
Sarah: crime. Disclaimer. Exactly.
Chris: It is still technically a crime in North Carolina, but no
Sarah: in the criminal world. But in the divorce world, if you're separated and someone does sleep with someone else. Yeah. It might be a criminal misdemeanor, but
Elizabeth: it's not used to prove that you were seeing that person prior to consent can make her life a little
Sarah: difficult to beat that evidence can be used to corroborate.
Theory or an allegation that you had an affair during the marriage, but if you have slept with someone post-separation that you did not know or anything before you got separated, that's not an affair in the chapter 59.
Elizabeth: So not in our world, maybe in the criminal world,
Sarah: but yeah,
Elizabeth: but it didn't help things at all.
Chris: And I've never seen that prosecuted. Yeah, for what it's worth, honestly,
Sarah: it's like a one night [00:33:00] stand. They say the best way to get over someone is to,
Chris: I think Elizabeth's never heard that judging by her face,
Elizabeth: but what I would say to that is. I'm sitting in a mediation and I found out that you're sitting under somebody else. It ain't helping my case gets up.
Jen: True. True.
Sarah: Yeah. So it's better, probably better advice from a, not an attorney, but maybe,
Elizabeth: maybe your best friend
Jen: don't pour the therapist, reference many tests.
All right. I have a bonus one that I thought of Friday before we got started that you guys don't know about. So we're going to have 13 days of divorce or miss of divorce. All family law attorneys are nasty and mean and hate one another.
Elizabeth: No,
Sarah: exactly. It took us a second.
Jen: You guys had some name was rolling around in your head,
Elizabeth: but there, there may be.
The, there are hundreds of people in the way, what I can say about the wake County bar is they were lovely that they're all professional. And I am not like best friends with them, but I'm [00:34:00] friends with them and I respect them, but there are some out there and that's just their niche and that's what they do.
Sarah: , we do have a great one and wake County and we referenced wake County bars. It's the group of attorneys that practice in wake County, the reside and wake County basically speaking. And so many of them are great.
And a lot of times the case itself and the facts of the case can turn a case into something that you would classify maybe as nasty and very litigious. But at the end of the day, that attorney is still just another person who is doing their job and maybe. I think some people take on the personas of their clients a little too easily, but otherwise, we're doing our jobs.
Chris: A lot of it's just marketing, they're that the less there that's their persona that they put out there to attract clients.
I'm a shark, I'm a bulldog. I it's a persona, it's a marketing thing, and some people like that and they respond to that and more power to them.
Elizabeth: And what I would say is that's not us. We will advocate for you. We are really Bulldogs in the courtroom, but. I'm not going to do it, just to do it.
Sarah: Yeah. I love to litigate, but that's not going to be in my client's best interest all the time. [00:35:00] Then what you need to do as an attorney is if you get one of those cases, both sides, even if they get the facts are crazy, the clients are a little crazy. You got to be able to put that case aside and sit down and have a beer together.
Elizabeth: Be fine. And
Sarah: that's like
Elizabeth: any professionals, not just us. I know. So thanks for that.
Chris: And I didn't say any names,
Sarah: you
Jen: guys
Sarah: married, divorced Christmas,
Thank you for joining us on those 12 myths. I bet this was a bit of a longer episode, but of
Elizabeth: course it was good.
We covered a lot of topics. Yeah.
Sarah: And Elizabeth, that was a lot. Wasn't it?
Elizabeth: It was.
Sarah: It was a lot of shit, but shit. That's some shit.