Do the North Carolina Courts favor one parent over the other?

Most custody battles, of course, are not between one parent and some non-parent relative or third party. Most custody fights are between the child’s biological parents. As between the parents themselves, our statute also makes it clear that there is no presumption favoring either the mother or the father. North Carolina has abolished, as have many other states, the maternal preference, which was a presumption that the mother would be most capable of caring for a child during its earliest childhood years. This presumption was commonly known as the “tender years” doctrine. However, the mere abolition of the tender years doctrine does not mean that the mothers of young children are out of luck in custody fights. To the contrary, quite a number of North Carolina judges are still strongly inclined to favor the mother while a child is very young, most especially when the mother has been the child’s primary caregiver all along.