Legal Question in Family Law in North Carolina

Depends! It sounds like he filed and served you under his last name instead of your maiden name. If this is the case, it may be that the divorce is legal under the concepts of ratification and / or estoppel. In other words all the parties involved intended and believed they were divorced and have conducted themselves that way for 20 years and it would be unjust to hold otherwise due to a 'typo'. However, your statement, 'I had kept my maiden name during the marriage for all legal documents.' concerns me - it implies you used your married name for things other than legal documents. This may also have an impact on things because you can not legally do this - you are required to consistently and non-fraudulently use one name only. Not one name for legal documents and another for other things. If you used names interchangeably you may have created a problem for yourself.