Most people carrying an old charge assume it’s permanent. In North Carolina, that assumption is increasingly wrong — the expunction laws have been expanded repeatedly in recent years, and waiting periods that used to stretch to fifteen years have shrunk dramatically. If something from your past is still showing up on background checks, it is worth thirty minutes to find out whether it has to.
Dismissed or found not guilty? That comes off.
Start with the easy category: charges that were dismissed or ended in a not-guilty verdict are expungeable — in many recent cases the clearing now even happens automatically. But “automatic” has gaps, older cases often need a petition, and plenty of dismissed charges from years past are still sitting on records right now, visible to every landlord and employer who looks. We check; it costs you nothing to ask.
Convictions: the nonviolent expunction
Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-145.5, nonviolent misdemeanor and felony convictions can be expunged after a waiting period:
- One nonviolent misdemeanor: 3 years after conviction or completion of the sentence;
- Multiple nonviolent misdemeanors: 7 years after the last conviction;
- One nonviolent felony: 10 years; up to three nonviolent felonies: 20 years.
“Nonviolent” is defined by exclusion — Class A1 misdemeanors, offenses with assault as an element, Class A through G felonies, sex offenses, and certain drug felonies don’t qualify. And one blunt limit worth knowing: DWI convictions cannot be expunged in North Carolina — one more reason to fight a DWI before conviction, not regret it after.
What an expunction actually does
When granted, the record is removed from the public record — the arrest, the charge, the conviction. Background checks come back clean, and in most contexts you may lawfully deny the charge ever occurred. For a professional license, a job application, a security clearance, or simply the dignity of a clean answer to a question, few legal services deliver more per dollar.
The process
An expunction is a petition — paperwork, certified records, an AOC form set that must be exactly right, and months of processing through the courts and the SBI. We handle the whole arc: eligibility review, petition, filing, and follow-through, for a flat fee quoted up front. Seventeen-plus years in the Carteret County courthouse means we can usually tell you in one phone call whether your record qualifies.
Find out what can come off your record: call 252-728-1373 or tell us what’s on it.