Permanent Child Custody Order - grounds for mistrial or appeal

Nov of 2022. Starting out where i agreed to venture 50/50 Temporary custody with a borderline personality disorder ex who 3 months after agreeing to this he beat his girlfriend and was on the run for pending charges. We go back for the return from the emergency custody hearing, and he tells his attorney that the girlfriend he beat wasn’t going to press charges and had dropped the 50b which was a Lle. My attorney comes out and says were going back to 50/50 immediately, not knowing his words were a lie because she hadn’t discussed anything with me. So, the temp order goes back into place immediately where we have 50/50 custody. The girl friend gets a 50b as do I for a prior incident and then Covid hits… we stay in this temporary order for 3 years prior to finally getting a case Infront of the judge to hear for the first time.

This first trial date was 9/2021 - we have two days heard here, then get back on the calendar Infront of the same judge on 5/2022 and again for the final hearing in 11/2022 where the judge granted me full primary legal and physical custody of my daughter with her father having every other weekend and one day during the off weeks. He doesn’t state findings of fact just says he will get them to us by the end of this week. During this he says in summer months the defendant will have week on and week off.

It’s now June my daughter is out of school, and we went back to get a temporary order in place for summer months and signed before the judge because we still do not have a permanent order or findings of fact to be able to do a permanent order and the judge changes summer visitation to every other weekend and one week each month… well dad doesn’t follow this and wont- he goes by the week to a week that was stated in open court because he says we do not have an order so hes going by what he wants.

I’m looking for any statutes or case law in NC that deal with Mistrials (for taking so long to be heard between trial dates and to be able to get on the calendar without getting bumped) or taking so long to get a court order put into place.

Is there anything at all I can do or any help anyone can guide me too to get the courts exact rules around orders and how long they have to put an order into place ect… i’m at my end and really dont know what to do but i feel like the longer it takes the more pull he will have with a mistrial or appeal.

Thank you

Unfortunately it is common for orders to take awhile to get back from the judge. Most judges require the attorneys to draft the order and submit it by a certain date, then it may still take several weeks or months to get the final order back from the judge.

This is not a mistrial situation.

Until you have a new order that has been signed and file stamped by the clerk’s office, the most recently filed order stands.

You may be able to file a motion for entry of order and set it for a court date in an attempt to get the order faster. Your lawyer may know who in your county to reach out to to check on order statuses.


Anna Ayscue

Attorney with Rosen Law Firm Cary • Chapel Hill • Durham • Raleigh • Wake Forest

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