I want half!

A good rule for expectations in court proceedings is that nothing is guaranteed and everything depends on the facts as a whole. North Carolina is NOT a community property state. This means that nobody is getting half automatically. North Carolina utilizes equitable distribution to distribute marital and divisible assets. This means that the Court’s intention is to reach a fair distribution of the marital assets. There is potential for the distribution to be 50/50, however, it can be any distribution that the Court finds to be fair under the circumstances. If you haven’t already guessed it, everyone has a different definition of what is fair.

The final distribution of property is determined by many different factors. This could include an assessment of the income of the parties, duration of the marriage, the health of the parties, contributions by one spouse to the others educational or career development, tax consequences and more.

It is the Court’s intention to split things fairly and it is presumed that an equal split between the parties is fair, however, individuals go to court and present the evidence to determine what will truly be equitable. So no, no one automatically gets half of the assets. Essentially, they’ve got to do a little more work to get their portion of the assets! Give us a call and we can find out the likely outcome of your property division case! 910-240-2217