Any person interested under a deed, will, written contract or other writings constituting a contract, or whose rights, status or other legal relations are affected by a statute, municipal ordinance, contract or franchise, may have determined any question of construction or validity arising under the instrument, statute, ordinance, contract, or franchise, and obtain a declaration of rights, status, or other legal relations thereunder. A contract may be construed either before or after there has been a breach thereof.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-254
Courts given power of construction of all instruments
Known as the Uniform Declaratory Judgment Act
The act spans §§ 1-253 to 1-267 (15 sections).
Applied in 46 court decisions — leading case McCrann v. Pinehurst, LLC (2013)
Most recently applied in Sloan v. Inolife Techs., Inc. (November 2018)
1931, c. 102, s. 2.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: North Carolina General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain North Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.