North Carolina Learn
The one-year separation: what counts and what doesn't
An absolute divorce requires living separate and apart for one year plus six months' North Carolina residency by either spouse — both measured at filing. Separation is factual: different homes and at least one spouse intending it to be permanent; no agreement, filing, or court paper is required to be separated.
The honesty note
Living in separate bedrooms under one roof generally does not count, and the clock runs from the actual separation — dates matter more than paperwork.
Authority locked — retrieved from the hash-pinned corpus
Do it with the tools
Legal information, not legal advice. Statements about county or district practice defer to your county's local rules and the clerk — where this platform has no verified county data, it says so instead of guessing.