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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The office of the Clerk of Superior Court is created by the North Carolina Constitution which
mandates that there be a Clerk of Superior Court for each county. Under the constitution, it is
the responsibility of the General Assembly to prescribe jurisdiction and the powers of the
Clerk. Laws of the General Assembly regarding clerks must be uniformly applied in every
county in the State.
Voters of each county elect the Clerk of Superior Court to a four-year term. Clerks are paid
by the State, with their salaries scaled in accordance with the population of their counties.
The Clerk appoints the assistants, deputies, and employees in his or her office. The number
of assistants and deputies that each clerk may employ varies from county to county depending
on the volume of business. Assistant and deputy clerks are paid on a salary schedule fixed by
the Administrative Office of the Courts based on education and years of service in the Clerk’s
office; the maximum and minimum salaries within that scale are fixed by the General
Assembly.
The responsibilities of the Clerk are numerous and varied. The Clerk, as a judicial officer of
the Superior Court, has judicial responsibilities. The Clerk is judge of probate; that is, the
Clerk handles the probate of wills (proceedings to determine if a paper writing is a valid will)
and the administration of estates of decedents, minors, and incompetents. The Clerk also
hears a variety of special proceedings such as adoptions, incompetency determinations, and
partitions of land and is empowered to issue arrest and search warrants and to exercise the
same powers as a magistrate with respect to taking pleas of guilty to minor littering, traffic,
wildlife, boating, marine fisheries, alcoholic beverage, State park recreation, and worthless-
check offenses.
The Clerk is also responsible for all clerical and record-keeping functions of the Superior
Court and District Court. The Clerk operates a unified record-keeping system for all civil
actions, special proceedings, estates, criminal actions, juvenile actions, minutes of the court,
judgments, liens, lis pendens, and numerous other records required by law. The Clerk
maintains the judgment docket, is custodian of evidence in civil and criminal trials, and issues
civil summons and subpoenas. In addition, the Clerk invests money received and held by his
or her office in trust and receives and administers insurance or other money on behalf of
minors and incapacitated adults.