Watch our free online Simple Divorce Clinic to learn how to file a simple divorce action in court without hiring an attorney. We also give you important information regarding any changes to the court process as a result of COVID-19. Filing for divorce affects your rights to property division, spousal support, and alimony. You could lose important rights by filing for divorce. If you wish to pursue property division, spousal support, or alimony, you should consult with a private attorney to discuss your legal rights before filing. The clinic will provide you with general legal information and guidance only. The clinic will not provide you with specific, individual legal advice. If you need more help after the clinic, call our toll-free Helpline to apply for help or you may consult with an attorney in private practice.
ASHEVILLE · August 5, 2019—The North Carolina Bar Association honored TeAndra Miller, the head of our Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative, with the Deborah Greenblatt Outstanding Legal Services Attorney Award at the association’s Pro Bono Awards Ceremony on June 20 in Asheville.
The Greenblatt Award is given annually to a legal aid lawyer who has made exemplary contributions to the provision of legal aid to North Carolinians in poverty. The award is named after the late Deborah Greenblatt, the former executive director of Disability Rights NC and an inspirational leader in the legal aid and disability rights communities.
“I am truly honored to receive the Greenblatt Award,” TeAndra said, “and I am equally grateful for the opportunity to do such important work on behalf of some of Legal Aid’s most vulnerable clients. My colleagues and I advocate for people whose lives are literally at stake, a fact which infuses our day-to-day work with incredible purpose and meaning—a true blessing.”
TeAndra has been a legal aid lawyer for nearly her entire 25-year legal career. In 1994, after earning her J.D. from N.C. Central University School of Law, she became a family law attorney with East Central Community Legal Services in Raleigh, the predecessor to our Raleigh field office. TeAndra left legal aid for private practice in 1996 but returned in 1999 and has focused on domestic violence ever since.
As the head of our Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative, TeAndra coordinates the delivery of legal services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault across the state. She ensures that advocates throughout our field offices have the training, supervision and resources necessary to provide consistently high-quality and compassionate representation to some of our most vulnerable clients.
She has built strong relationships with partner organizations and funders, and plays a major role in expanding our capacity to serve victims by securing and managing critical funding to support our advocacy. She also serves as the public face of our advocacy by conducting outreach and providing training to law enforcement, social services agencies, the larger legal community and other stakeholders at the local, state and national levels.
TeAndra has served on a variety of local and statewide task forces that focus on domestic violence and sexual assault. She is currently a member of the N.C. Equal Access to Justice Commission, the Administrative Office of the Court’s Family Court Committee and the Wake County Fatality Task Force.
TeAndra’s parents inspired her to become a public-interest lawyer. Her father, Louis Martin, was a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow for a civil legal aid organization in Little Rock, Ark., in the 70s. He went on to serve as the Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and Deputy Director of the Maryland Commission on Human Relations.
When her mother, Delores Martin, was 32, Gov. Bill Clinton appointed her to serve as Acting Director of the Arkansas Department of Aging. She went on to direct the Aging Division of the Illinois Attorney General’s office and the Illinois Court of Claims. TeAndra and her mother were both sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court at the same ceremony in 2009.
TeAndra lives in Wake County with her husband. They have two daughters and one grandson.
BOONE · June 18, 2019 – The summer is just getting started, but Kelsey Woods, summer intern in our Boone office, has already had a huge impact on the life of one of our clients.
Our client came to Legal Aid after experiencing horrific violence at the hands of a family member. After several days of intensive training, including mock trials, and observation and practice, Kelsey represented our client at a domestic violence hearing in Wilkes County District Court. She secured a one-year restraining order, allowing our client to have a little bit of peace of mind in the midst of a difficult time. The judge was supremely complimentary of Kelsey’s conduct and practice. She described her as being well spoken and seeming beyond her years.
We are so happy to have Kelsey working with us this summer. She is a rising 3L at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Prior to law school, Kelsey served five years active duty onboard the U.S.S. George H. W. Bush. She is currently serving as a Petty Officer First Class in the United States Naval Reserves.
“Working for Legal Aid is such a rewarding experience because it allows you to directly empower your clients and facilitate positive changes in their lives,” Kelsey said.
While at Legal Aid, MLK interns work under the supervision of seasoned Legal Aid attorneys in our offices and projects across the state, bringing legal theory to life by doing substantive work on real cases for real clients.
Legal Aid NC has a long history of addressing the legal needs of disaster victims. We know that survivors of Hurricane Florence and Tropical Storm Michael face a long road to a full recovery.
We know something else, too: Though it may not be obvious, the plights of domestic violence victims and storm survivors are surprisingly similar.
Let’s begin with the anxiety people feel when they first hear that a hurricane is heading their way. Domestic violence victims also experience a high level of anxiety about their partner’s unpredictable “stormy” behavior, which often leaves a path of destruction in the form of threats, severe harassment, and physical and sexual abuse.
Once violence seems imminent, both groups face a choice: Do I stay, or do I leave?
Domestic violence victims can face the same challenges to leaving. When their abusers often control them to such an extent that they have no access to money or a car, their options for finding a new place to live – moving into a shelter with strangers, packing themselves and their kids into a family member’s home – can seem grim at best or nonexistent at worst.
For domestic violence victims and storm survivors, the inability to escape or evacuate can be fatal. Since 2010, an average of more than 100 North Carolinians have been murdered in domestic violence incidents every year, according to statistics from the N.C. Department of Public Safety. That’s more than double the combined death toll from Florence and Michael.
There’s an economic toll, too. A 2014 study from UNC Charlotte found that domestic violence costs North Carolinians $307 million a year in lost productivity, health care costs, court and police costs, and more. That’s less than the economic damage caused by Florence and Michael – most estimates are in the billions – but the costs from these storms will zero out over time. Not so with domestic violence.
Thankfully, critical short- and long-term services are available for domestic violence victims and storm survivors, and Legal Aid of North Carolina is a front-line service provider for both groups. You can find out more about our Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Project, and our Battered Immigrant Project, which offer free legal assistance to victims, by visiting the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault section of our website, or calling our Helpline. Disaster survivors can get help by visiting the Disaster Relief section of our website, visiting a FEMA Disaster Recovery Center to meet our staff, or by calling N.C.’s toll-free Disaster Legal Services Hotline at 1-833-242-3549 or 1-866-219-5262.
For domestic violence victims, access to civil legal aid has been proven to be one of the most significant factors leading to a decline in violence. Last year, Legal Aid of North Carolina provided critical legal services to more than 6,500 victims.
We represent victims at court hearings for domestic violence protective orders, help them secure custody of their children, handle housing and immigration issues, and more. We know that domestic violence is a complex problem, and our goal is to provide whatever legal services are necessary to stop the violence.
Bill Cresenzo, North Carolina Lawyers Weekly – October 23, 2019
RALEIGH · October 16, 2019—Legal Aid of North Carolina and the Duke Civil Justice Clinic announced today that they recently settled a federal discrimination complaint filed against the Raleigh Housing Authority (RHA) on behalf of a public housing tenant who was a victim of domestic violence.
The settlement includes a Federal Consent Decree—believed to be the first in the country to address a landlord’s obligations under the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which requires housing authorities to provide tenants who are victims of domestic violence with specific housing protections.
In the lawsuit, filed in the United States Court of the Eastern District of North Carolina in 2018, the tenant alleged that the Raleigh Housing Authority violated the federal Fair Housing Act by denying her repeated requests for an emergency transfer to a safe location. The tenant was the victim of multiple crimes at her housing unit: violence perpetrated by an ex-boyfriend who strangled her; a home intruder who threatened her guest at gunpoint; and armed men who shot bullets into her apartment. In addition, she alleged that the Raleigh Housing Authority was in violation of VAWA. RHA has denied the allegations.
The Federal Consent Decree requires RHA to:
Provide tenants who are facing eviction with written notice of their rights under VAWA; (One of VAWA’s goals is to ensure that victims of domestic violence do not face eviction as a result of the abuse.)
Provide tenants who are denied admission to RHA with written notice of their rights under VAWA; (Another goal of VAWA is to ensure that victims of domestic violence—who often have a poor credit history, prior evictions, and criminal charges related to the abuse—are not denied housing as a result.)
Make emergency transfer request forms and the RHA’s emergency transfer plan available and accessible to all tenants;
Assign a current RHA employee as a point person to answer questions about VAWA’s housing protections;
Provide regular, mandatory training on the Fair Housing Act for all property managers and employees involved in lease intake, transfer decisions and lease termination decisions;
Provide regular, mandatory training on VAWA and domestic violence for all property managers and employees involved in lease intake, transfer decisions and lease termination decisions;
Send a letter to public housing tenants each year soliciting feedback on all aspects of the housing authority, including its employees;
Provide documentation to Legal Aid of North Carolina for three consecutive years demonstrating RHA’s compliance with the Consent Decree.
“The Fair Housing Project of Legal Aid of North Carolina is committed to ensuring that women and children in public housing do not become homeless because they have been denied the protections of the Fair Housing Act or the Violence Against Women Act,” said Suzanne Chester, a managing attorney at Legal Aid of North Carolina, and co-counsel on the case. The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability and familial status.
“We are very pleased with the results for our client and her children, and we hope that this Consent Decree will serve to highlight to public housing authorities across the country their obligations to comply with VAWA and Fair Housing laws,” commented co-counsel, Charles Holton, Director of Duke University’s Civil Justice Clinic.
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Legal Aid of North Carolina is a statewide, nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services in civil matters to low-income people in order to ensure equal access to justice and to remove legal barriers to economic opportunity. Our Fair Housing Project works to eliminate housing discrimination and to ensure equal housing opportunity for all people through education, outreach, public policy initiatives, advocacy and enforcement. Since its founding in 2011, the Project has helped obtain over $6.6 million in relief for victims of discrimination. The Project is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing Initiatives Program. Learn more at FairHousingNC.org.
North Carolinians seeking information about their rights under the federal Fair Housing Act or who believe they are a victim of housing discrimination can call the Project’s statewide toll-free helpline at 1-855-797-FAIR (3247).
The work that provided the basis for this publication was supported by funding under a grant with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The substance and findings of the work are dedicated to the public. The author and publisher are solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements and interpretations contained in this publication. Such interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Government.
Media Contact
Sean Driscoll, Director of Public Relations, Legal Aid of North Carolina, 919-856-2132, seand@legalaidnc.org
