If a North Carolina parent signs a voluntary child support agreement under G.S. 110-133 rather than going to court, how much does the clerk charge to file it, and is the fee the same as for filing a regular civil lawsuit?
Plain-English summary
The Administrative Office of the Courts' fiscal controller asked the AG a routine but real question. When North Carolina enacted its child support law in 1975 (Chapter 110, Article 9 of the General Statutes), G.S. § 110-133 created a new instrument: the "voluntary support agreement." A responsible parent could sign this agreement with the State or the custodial parent, and it would have the full force and effect of a court order, enforceable by contempt. G.S. § 110-134 said filing fees would be taxed to the responsible parent. But it did not say what the filing fee should be. Clerks needed a number.
Assistant Attorney General William F. Briley concluded the filing fee was $4.00.
The reasoning was a statutory-construction exercise. The voluntary support agreement was structurally a specialized version of a confession of judgment. Before the 1975 child support law, parents who wanted to voluntarily commit to support payments without a contested lawsuit used confessions of judgment to do so. Rule 68.1 of the Rules of Civil Procedure expressly contemplated child support: "Such judgment may also be entered . . . for support of minor children." Both the voluntary support agreement and the confession of judgment had full force and effect of court orders. Both were "without action" or "in lieu of . . . any legal proceeding."
That structural parallel mattered for the fee. G.S. § 7A-308 specified that a confession of judgment cost $4.00. The rationale was that clerk services for entering a confession (essentially recording an out-of-court document) were much less than the services involved in a fully contested civil district action, which cost $24.00. The voluntary support agreement involved similarly limited clerk services. Treating it like a civil action and charging full civil-action costs would have over-collected from the responsible parent.
The AG also reached for the principle that statutes dealing with the same subject matter must be construed in pari materia (together) to give effect to each. G.S. § 110-134 (filing fee to be taxed) and G.S. § 7A-308 ($4.00 for confession of judgment) together pointed at $4.00 as the proper fee. The 1975 child support law was new enough that statutory ambiguity could be resolved by looking at earlier statutes and the legislative history of the subject.
So $4.00 became the filing fee for a voluntary support agreement.
Currency note
This opinion was issued in 1977. Subsequent statutory amendments, court decisions, or later AG opinions may have changed the analysis. Treat this page as historical context, not current legal advice. Verify current law before relying on any specific rule, deadline, or remedy mentioned here. North Carolina's filing fee schedule has been substantially restructured multiple times since 1977. The current G.S. § 7A-308 fee for a confession of judgment is no longer $4.00, and the statutory framework for child support enforcement (Chapter 110, Article 9, and its successors) has been heavily amended, including the implementation of federal Title IV-D requirements and the IV-D enforcement agency framework. The structural relationship between voluntary support agreements and confessions of judgment continues to inform how clerks treat these filings, but the exact dollar amount must be checked against the current schedule.
Background and statutory framework
Voluntary support agreements were a practical innovation in North Carolina's 1975 child support reform. The reform's broader goal was to make it easier for the State and custodial parents to establish and enforce child support obligations, especially in cases where the responsible parent was willing to commit voluntarily but the absence of a court order created enforcement uncertainty. Before the reform, a voluntarily-paying parent who later stopped paying left the custodial parent with no quick path to court action; the parent had to file a full child support lawsuit.
The voluntary support agreement closed that gap. The parent signs the agreement; the agreement is filed with the clerk; the agreement has the force of a court order. If the parent stops paying, the custodial parent can use contempt proceedings, garnishment, and other enforcement tools without re-litigating the underlying support obligation.
For clerks, the new instrument required a filing-fee policy. The Rules of Civil Procedure handle confession of judgment as a parallel structure (Rule 68.1), and § 7A-308 had a specific fee for it. The AG bridged the new and old by analogy.
The opinion's brevity (the original is essentially three paragraphs) reflects how clean the analysis was. There was no real contrary argument; the question was just whether the routine clerk fee should be matched to civil-action costs or to confession-of-judgment costs, and the structural similarity made the answer obvious.
This is also one of the older NC AG opinions to appear in the modern online catalog. It dates from Attorney General Rufus L. Edmisten's term, before the formal-opinion versus advisory-opinion distinction was as fully developed. The opinion is signed only by AAG William F. Briley as the staff drafter, which was the routine pattern at the time.
Common questions
Did the $4.00 fee apply to all voluntary support agreements, or just those filed through the new statutory framework?
The opinion was specifically about voluntary support agreements under G.S. § 110-133, the 1975 statute. Other forms of voluntary support obligation (separation agreements with child support clauses, for example) had their own filing-fee rules and were not addressed by the opinion.
What if the responsible parent later challenged the voluntary support agreement?
A challenge to a voluntary support agreement would typically proceed in district court like any other order modification. The procedural costs of a challenge would be governed by the rules applicable to the proceeding type, not by the original $4.00 filing fee.
Why was the AG opinion even necessary if § 110-134 simply said the responsible parent would be taxed the filing fee?
Because § 110-134 was silent on the amount. Without an AG opinion or a statutory amendment, clerks would have had to choose between fee schedules, and clerks in different counties might have chosen differently. The AG opinion gave AOC a uniform rule to distribute to all clerks.
Source
Citations
- G.S. § 110-133, § 110-134
- G.S. § 1A-1, Rule 68.1
- G.S. § 7A-305, § 7A-308
Original opinion text
Requested By: Mr. J. Donald Chappell, Controller Administrative Office of the Courts Fiscal Management Division
Question: What is the filing fee for a voluntary support agreement set up under North Carolina child support law (G.S. 110-133)?
Conclusion: $4.00.
Article 9 of Chapter 110 of the North Carolina General Statutes is the North Carolina child support law, passed by the General Assembly in 1975. G.S. 110-133 is the section of that law which creates voluntary support agreements, tailor-made for the purposes of this new law. Although G.S. 110-134 indicates that any filing fees are to be taxed to the responsible parent signing the agreement, nowhere in Chapter 110 or elsewhere in the General Statutes is it specified what this filing fee should be.
A careful reading of G.S. 110-133 in conjunction with Article 28 of Chapter 7A (Uniform Costs and Fees in the Trial Division) and Rule 68.1 of the Rules of Civil Procedure (Confession of Judgment) provides sufficient indication of the proper fee. It is clear that the voluntary support agreement of Chapter 110 is actually a specialized version of a confession of judgment. Before the enactment of the child support law, confessions of judgment were in fact used to voluntarily establish child support orders. Indeed, they continue to be used for this purpose. The language of Rule 68.1 of the Rules of Civil Procedure mentions child support specifically — "Such judgment may also be entered . . . for support of minor children." Both the voluntary support agreement and the confession of judgment (for child support) have the full force and effect of orders of the court, enforceable by contempt. G.S. 110-133 and G.S. 1A-1, Rule 68.1(e). The confession of judgment is entered "without action;" the voluntary support agreement is "in lieu of . . . any legal proceeding." G.S. 1A-1, Rule 68.1(a); G.S. 110-133. In essence, both orders are substitutes for full legal actions, therefore the language of G.S. 7A-305 (Costs in civil actions) is not applicable.
G.S. 7A-308 (Miscellaneous fees and commissions) specifies that $4.00 is the cost of a confession judgment. The rationale is that $4.00 is more representative of the quantity of clerk services involved, rather than $24.00, the cost of an in-court, civil district action. The voluntary support agreement likewise is an out-of-court substitute for legal action, and should be treated accordingly. Statutes dealing with the same subject matter must be construed in pari materia, and harmonized, if possible to give effect to each. 7 N.C. Index 2d, Statutes § 5. Also, the fact that the child support law is so new has created ambiguity regarding the filing fee. In construing an ambiguous statute, earlier statutes on the subject and the history of legislation in regard thereto, including statutory changes over a period of years, may be considered in connection with the object, purpose, and language of the statute. 7 N.C. Index 2d, Statutes § 5. Accordingly, $4.00 is the most logical filing fee for a voluntary support agreement.
Rufus L. Edmisten
Attorney General
William F. Briley
Assistant Attorney General