Domestic Violence, Custody & Child Support — The Statistics

Protective orders & domestic violence in North Carolina

• Tens of thousands of 50B cases move through NC courts every year. The Judicial Branch's public dashboard reported roughly 20,000 protective-order filings statewide in fiscal year 2025. Current filed/pending/disposed counts by county and case type are published live.NC Judicial Branch data ↗
• 92 domestic-violence-related homicides in NC in 2024 — about one every four days, and 19 more than 2023 — per the State Bureau of Investigation's statutory annual report. Firearms are the most common weapon in these homicides.NC SBI 2024 report ↗
• Victimization is not one-gendered. In the CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 47.3% of U.S. women and 44.2% of U.S. men reported experiencing contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Severity and impact skew harder against women — about 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men reported an IPV-related impact such as injury or fear.CDC NISVS ↗
• Demand for DV services has grown sharply — the NC Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports client volumes far above pre-2020 levels and tracks every NC DV homicide publicly.NCCADV ↗

Custody

• About 1 in 4 U.S. children under 21 lives with one parent while the other parent lives outside the household.U.S. Census P60-285 ↗
• Roughly 4 in 5 custodial parents are mothers. The Census Bureau's recurring child-support report has put the custodial-mother share at about 80% for decades (79.9% in the 2018 report) — context for why custody practice discussions so often become gendered.U.S. Census P60-269 ↗
• North Carolina law starts from parity: between parents, "no presumption shall apply as to who will better promote the interest and welfare of the child," and joint custody must be considered on either parent's request. Outcomes that drift from that are supposed to be explained by written best-interest findings.G.S. 50-13.2 (full text)
• Most custody cases never reach trial. NC routes contested custody through mandatory mediation (G.S. 50-13.1(b)), and the large majority of cases statewide resolve by agreement or mediation rather than verdict — exact rates vary by district and year; the AOC publishes program data.NC AOC data ↗

Child support

• Fewer than half of custodial parents who are owed support receive the full amount due in a given year, per the Census Bureau's long-running series — most receive partial or no payment.U.S. Census child support ↗
• NC support amounts are formula-driven, not discretionary, in the typical case: the presumptive Guidelines (reviewed at least every four years by the Conference of Chief District Judges) set the number from incomes, overnights, and add-ons — which is why running the numbers yourself before court is realistic.G.S. 50-13.4 (full text)
• Enforcement is mechanical once triggered: at one month's delinquency, income withholding and license revocation become available — most collections nationally come through automatic wage withholding, not court hearings.U.S. OCSS ↗

What the numbers don't tell you — honestly

There is no reliable statistic for how many protective-order allegations are false or exaggerated. Studies define "false," "unfounded," and "unsubstantiated" differently, most contested orders are never adjudicated as either true or false, and advocacy numbers on both sides of this debate routinely overreach. We won't quote a made-up percentage in either direction. What the data does support: domestic violence is real, common, and sometimes lethal (the SBI homicide numbers above) — and ex parte orders issue on one side's account by design, which is exactly why the statutes build in fast hearings, renewal standards with required findings, modification, and appeal. Both things are true; this site exists for the second while never denying the first.

Frequently asked questions