Legal Question in Family Law in North Carolina

Anyone can be subpoenaed. The question is what the counselor will testify to. See the below statute. The party who is asking the counselor to testify presumably has a lawyer who is familiar with the evidentiary rules. So long as the counselor does not testify to anything that he/she learned during a counseling session (assuming the counselor is licensed), I don't see that the testimony would be privileged.

� 8‑53.8. Counselor privilege.

No person, duly licensed pursuant to Chapter 90, Article 24, of the General Statutes, shall be required to disclose any information which he or she may have acquired in rendering professional counseling services, and which information was necessary to enable him or her to render professional counseling services: Provided, that the presiding judge of a superior or district court may compel such disclosure, if in the court's opinion the same is necessary to a proper administration of justice and such disclosure is not prohibited by other statute or regulation.

To the extent this is some type of religious counselor, then the statute below might apply. Again, anything obtained within the realm of spiritual counseling might be prohibited but anything else might be allowed.

� 8‑53.2. Communications between clergymen and communicants.

No priest, rabbi, accredited Christian Science practitioner, or a clergyman or ordained minister of an established church shall be competent to testify in any action, suit or proceeding concerning any information which was communicated to him and entrusted to him in his professional capacity, and necessary to enable him to discharge the functions of his office according to the usual course of his practice or discipline, wherein such person so communicating such information about himself or another is seeking spiritual counsel and advice relative to and growing out of the information so imparted, provided, however, that this section shall not apply where communicant in open court waives the privilege conferred.