Delay of ED settlement

North Carolina Divorce Law Divorce and Separation Answers
1

I have been separated for 21 months and my ED still has not been settled.
We finally have settled custody and child support, so there is an outstanding claim for alimony and ED.

We had a status review hearing on June 25 and I assumed that a date would be scheduled for one or the other. I understand from my attorney that there is a certain order in which items must be heard and I think she said alimony needed to be heard before ED. My ex husband has filed for alimony(I was the breadwinner), I filed first for ED.

I received notice that the next status review hearing is Aug 13 and I didn’t understand why a court date was not set for either alimony or ED or both.
My attorney responded that a date could not be set because my ex’s attorney was not present at the last status review.

My questions are this:
Is an attorney not required to be present at a status review?
Do both attorneys have to be present for a court date to be set?
Does alimony have to be heard before ED?

I’m concerned that his attorney is attempting to drag things out because he is living in the house and I have been paying the mortgage…so he has been living for free for 21 months. I don’t want her to just continue to not show up for status reviews so that we can’t get a court date set.
Also, now that I’ve been ordered to pay child support, I have not paid the mortgage for June or July because the funds that I was using to pay the mortgage are now being used to pay child support and he has not paid the mortgage either.

Thanks in advance for your time.

2

Alimony must be decided after, or at the same time as ED, as the distribution of property can affect the needs of the dependant spouse and/or the ability of the supporting spouse to pay.

The attorney should be present at the status review, however if they have a conflict in their schedule, they will often ask opposing counsel to report the status of the case to the judge.

With respect to scheduling, each county does that differently, and some counties will set court dates automatically if neither side requests a hearing date. You will need to ask your attorney how scheduling is handled in your county.