How can you lose custody of your child? What NC laws say about parental rights
Whether it’s a high-profile custody battle stemming from a murder case or a couple navigating a divorce, child custody cases can be complicated legal matters.
In North Carolina, there are multiple laws on the books that guide custody cases and what’s required of custody agreements between parents. Some statutes lay out when a parent can lose their parental rights.
Here’s what to know about child custody laws in North Carolina and what can get someone’s parental rights terminated:
How can you lose custody of your child in North Carolina?
There are multiple conditions under which someone’s parental rights can be terminated, according to North Carolina statute, including:
If the parent “has abused or neglected” their child
If the parent has been found “incapable of providing for the proper care and supervision” to their child due to “substance abuse, intellectual disability, mental illness, organic brain syndrome, or any other cause or condition that renders the parent unable or unavailable to parent the juvenile and the parent lacks an appropriate alternative child care arrangement.” There must also be “a reasonable probability that the incapability will continue for the foreseeable future.”
If the parent has been convicted of certain crimes, such as “murder or voluntary manslaughter of another child of the parent or other child residing in the home”
If the parent has been convicted of certain sex crimes “that resulted in the conception of the juvenile”
If the parent’s parental rights to another child “have been terminated involuntarily by a court of competent jurisdiction and the parent lacks the ability or willingness to establish a safe home”
If the parent “has willfully left the juvenile in foster care or placement outside the home for more than 12 months without showing to the satisfaction of the court that reasonable progress under the circumstances has been made in correcting those conditions which led to the removal of the juvenile”
If the child “has been placed in the custody of a county department of social services, licensed child-placing agency, a child-caring institution, or a foster home, and the parent has for a continuous period of six months immediately preceding the filing of the petition or motion willfully failed to pay a reasonable portion of the cost of care for the juvenile although physically and financially able to do so”
If the parent has “willfully abandoned the juvenile for at least six consecutive months immediately preceding the filing of the petition or motion, or the parent has voluntarily abandoned an infant” by state law “for at least 60 consecutive days immediately preceding the filing of the petition or motion.”
State statute says someone’s parental rights cannot be terminated “for the sole reason that the parents are unable to care for the juvenile on account of their poverty.”
If “one parent has been awarded custody of the juvenile by judicial decree or has custody by agreement of the parents” and the other parent “has for one year or more next preceding the filing of the petition or motion willfully failed without justification to pay for the care, support, and education of the juvenile, as required by the decree or custody agreement,” the other parent’s parental rights can be terminated.
“The father of a juvenile born out of wedlock” can have his parental rights terminated if he fails to file “an affidavit of paternity in a central registry maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services, “legitimate the juvenile pursuant” to state law, marry the child’s mother, provide “substantial financial support or consistent care with respect to the juvenile and mother” or establish paternity under other state statutes.
What are the North Carolina child custody laws?
Under North Carolina law, the state court system explain, child custody “includes the right to make major life decisions about a child and the right to have the child in your care.”
“Legal custody is the right to make major decisions about the child. Physical custody means the right to have the child in your physical care, either all the time or part of the time. Both legal and physical custody can be either shared by the parents or held solely by one parent,” the Judicial Branch says.
Visitation, meanwhile, is defined as “a secondary form of custody, which includes the right to visit with a child at times set forth in a court order, sometimes under specific conditions.”
It’s “frequently used to refer to a person’s parenting time when it is relatively limited.”
It’s possible under state law for a parent to have “sole custody” of a child — meaning the custodial parent “can make major decisions about the child’s life without consulting the other parent” — or for parents to share “joint custody,” meaning “they must consult one another and jointly make major decisions, such as where the child will attend school or whether the child will have a major medical procedure.”
North Carolina parents who are no longer together “are not required to get a custody order, but may choose to do so in case they do not agree about the child’s care.”
“Both legal parents have equal rights to the child if there is no custody order,” the state says.
“Either parent can be awarded custody of a child of any age, depending on the family’s specific circumstances,” the Judicial Branch adds.
And “custody rights do not depend on payment of child support, but on the type of relationship with the parent that is in the child’s best interests;” although, “a court may consider refusal to pay child support in its analysis of the parent’s ability to act in the child’s best interests.”
For more information and answers to frequently asked questions, visit nccourts.gov/help-topics/family-and-children/child-custody.
