Legal Question in Family Law in North Carolina

Child's mother has decided she wants to send my daughter(14 years old) to an all girl boarding school for a 12-18 month program. This program is $800 a month. Daughter is a straight A student, but recently over the past couple of years has started being angry towards her mom. Daughter has never been in trouble with the law, never drinking, smoking, doing drugs. Mom kept dad out of the daughters life for 7 years and had numerous men living with her through out the years. Daughter was most recently caught sexting. Dad & daughter both want daughter to live with dad but mother has supposedly already signed her in at this boarding school. No custody agreement is in place. No other options have even been considered like therapy, or evening removing her from the home to see if things get better. What can be done? Can dad go get daughter from the boarding school? Will child support be dropped? We don't have $5,000 to start a custody battle either.


Asked on 9/14/15, 9:29 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

You don't need $5000 to start a custody battle - just to finish it. Basically, you are in a situation that has so many possibilities and factors as to make answering your questions in any real usable way virtually impossible. You are just gonna have to bite the bullet and hire a local family law attorney. I can tell you that if there have been no Court orders or other agreements establishing custody and if you are listed on the birth certificate then you each have equal rights to the child - you just can not breach the peace and forceabley take the child. However, it would be highly unusual for there to be a child support order without some sort of custody arrangement. Also, so what if the program is $800 a month - unless you signed an agreement to pay, this is mom's show. Finally, unless the child is mentally and / or emotionally incapable of expressing a reasonable opinion of where she wants to be, Courts will generally take a 14 year old child's wishes into consideration. Good luck!

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Answered on 9/15/15, 7:41 pm


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