An action is commenced by the filing of a petition in the clerk's office when that office is open or by the acceptance of a juvenile petition by a magistrate when the clerk's office is closed, which shall constitute filing.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7B-405
Commencement of action
Applied in 14 court decisions — leading case In Re As (2008)
Most recently applied in In Re JNS (November 2010)
1979, c. 815, s. 1; 1998-202, s. 6; 1999-456, s. 60; 2017-161, s. 3.
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.