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It is easy to get attached to a pet, especially cats and dogs. They bring us comfort, keep us company, and become part of the family. But what happens to those pets when their owners split? Pets are personal property When a relationship goes south, figuring out who gets to keep the pets can become a contentious fight and often pets are used as a bargaining chip in divorces. State laws, including North Carolina, consider… Read More
Ward Family Law Group is pleased to announce the addition of Ryan Tarrant to the Wake County Parenting coordinator list. Ryan is currently accepting appointments as a Parenting Coordinator in Wake County. Ryan Tarrant earned his law degree from Campbell University’s Norman Adrian Wiggins School of law and is certified by the State Bar of North Carolina as a specialist in Family Law. He trained as a parenting coordinator through The Center for Cooperative Parenting,… Read More
In Part 1, we discussed the use of AirTags to track your spouse and children and the implications in divorce and custody cases. Now you might be wondering, what can I do to protect myself or my child from being tracked? Manufacturers have taken steps to improve Security. The success of these trackers is based off their proximity to other devices they can ping off, and they can only ping off devices with Bluetooth turned… Read More
AirTags and other Bluetooth trackers, like Life360’s Tile, are coin-sized tracking devices. Using a Bluetooth signal, an AirTag pings off any Apple device using Apple’s Find My network and shows you the location of the AirTag. When out of range of the tracker, Tile’s app will show you the last location it was seen by your device and can ping off other Tile users to locate its current location. The benefit of these trackers is… Read More
The CDC recently approved the Covid-19 vaccine for administration to children ages 5 to 11. For many parents, this was the green light they had been waiting for to protect their children and start the journey towards a return to normalcy. For other parents, the CDC’s announcement gave them pause. Celebrity Matthew McConaughey, who is the parent of three children, age 9, 11, and 13, announced last week that he was not vaccinating his younger… Read More
North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby declared October 17-23, 2021 “Conflict Resolution Week” in North Carolina. Read Order Here. Mediation is one conflict resolution method we use A LOT in our office to resolve disputes. When reading Justice Newby’s Order last week, several words and phrases jumped out at me about the benefits of using mediation as a means to settle cases—“foster communication” “salvage relationships” “empower litigants to devise mutually agreeable and… Read More
A recent story in the local news demonstrated the real impact that Covid has had on our legal system. For months, Wake County Family Court cases were routinely continued over and over again because courts were closed, or only temporary, non-prejudicial hearings were possible because they could be conducted remotely via Webex. The court system is not to blame for the pandemic, but the shutdowns and closures have created a backlog in the court system… Read More
In May 2017, we blogged about the “Do’s and Don’t’s” in Family Law. With the pandemic forcing most of us to live a “virtual life”, we thought it was important to revisit and update what you should and should not be doing on the Internet. Emails, text messages, websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking (“social media”), or any other type of information that is… Read More
Domestic violence has been labeled as an “epidemic” in our country. Statistics show that one in every three women and one in four men in the United States will experience some form of domestic violence at the hands of their intimate partner. Just as domestic violence can affect heterosexual relationships, it can affect LGBTQ+ relationships as well. North Carolina provides two avenues for individuals to seek relief from their abuser: N.C.G.S. § 50B and N.C.G.S…. Read More
Mediation is a way to resolve family law disputes where a neutral third party, the mediator, assists parties in trying to reach an agreement. The mediator does not advocate for either party or make any decisions. The decision-making authority is left to the parties. The mediator’s job is to help parties work out their own agreements by exploring the parties’ needs and interests and by helping them formulate specific solutions to resolve the disputed issues…. Read More