by Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
Former NASCAR driver Jennifer Jo Cobb recently learned just how costly North Carolina’s alienation-of-affection and criminal-conversation laws can be.
A Davidson County jury found Cobb liable in a lawsuit filed by Tracey Hughes, who alleged that Cobb had an affair with her husband, contributing to the destruction of their 17-year marriage. The jury awarded Hughes $50,000 for alienation of affection and $800,000 for criminal conversation, plus nominal punitive damages. Cobb denied the allegations, and further legal proceedings remain possible.
Then there is former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Heather Ammel, a North Carolina woman, is suing Sinema over an alleged relationship with Ammel’s husband, Matthew, who served on Sinema’s security detail and later worked for her Senate office and campaign. Sinema sought dismissal on jurisdictional grounds, but a federal judge recently allowed the North Carolina lawsuit to proceed. The ruling did not determine whether Sinema is liable; it simply allowed the case to move forward.
Those are hardly the only recent headlines.
In Durham County, social media influencer Brenay Kennard was ordered to pay $1.75 million after a jury found her liable for alienation of affection and criminal conversation involving another woman’s husband. Kennard is appealing. In another recent case, a Carteret County jury returned a verdict exceeding $5.5 million.
For laws so often dismissed as relics of another age, alienation of affection and criminal conversation are suddenly making a lot of news.
Yet at virtually the same time that these cases have returned the laws to public attention, another social-media personality has emerged as a prominent voice in the effort to abolish them.
Jen Hamilton, a North Carolina labor-and-delivery nurse and influencer with millions of followers, has spoken publicly about her marital breakup and joined those calling for significant changes to North Carolina’s marriage and divorce laws. Her platform has helped bring new visibility to a debate that has repeatedly surfaced in Raleigh.
But the effort to abolish alienation of affection and criminal conversation is not new.
I know because I have been there.
As far back as 2009, I appeared before lawmakers to oppose efforts to eliminate these causes of action. Since then, whenever repeal proposals have come before legislative committees that heard testimony, I have returned to make essentially the same case. In 2023, lawmakers again proposed legislation to abolish both causes of action. The measure was referred to committee and never emerged.
The laws have also survived challenges outside the legislature.
In 2017, the North Carolina Court of Appeals considered a direct constitutional challenge to alienation of affection and criminal conversation. The defendant argued that the causes of action violated constitutional protections for intimate association, speech, expression, and sexual privacy. A trial court had agreed, but the Court of Appeals reversed and rejected the facial constitutional challenge.
In doing so, the appellate court recognized that the laws could serve legitimate interests related to personal injury and the marital relationship, including what the court called the “promise of monogamy” associated with marriage. The court did not decide whether the laws represented the best public policy. That question belongs to lawmakers. But the effort to strike them down as facially unconstitutional failed.
So these laws have been repeatedly challenged in legislative committees and in the courts – yet they remain.
Why?
That question brings me back to what I told lawmakers nearly seventeen years ago.
We sustain and protect the things we value through laws commensurate with our zeal for them.
That principle applies throughout public policy. Property receives legal protection because ownership matters. Contracts receive protection because promises and obligations matter. The law recognizes remedies when someone intentionally inflicts certain types of injury on another person.
If marriage is one of society’s most important institutions, the law’s willingness to recognize intentional interference with it as a real injury says something about how seriously society takes marriage itself.
That does not mean every alienation-of-affection lawsuit is brought from the right motive. It does not mean every multimillion-dollar verdict is necessarily proportionate. Nor does it absolve an unfaithful husband or wife of responsibility. The person who violates his or her marriage vows bears direct responsibility for that betrayal.
Nevertheless, acknowledging the unfaithful spouse’s guilt does not logically require declaring the third party morally or legally irrelevant. When intentional interference is proved, that person helped wreck a home.
Critics of these laws argue the actions can become vehicles for revenge, generate excessive awards, and prolong the bitterness surrounding marital breakdown.
But repeal would make a profound statement: whatever injury an outsider may intentionally inflict on a marriage, the law will no longer recognize that interference as actionable. In effect, the injured spouse is left to bear the consequences of a deliberate intrusion, while the outsider who helped cause the harm faces no civil accountability. Those consequences can be far-reaching: emotional trauma, the breakup of a family, disruption in children’s lives, financial loss, legal expenses, and the long-term costs that often follow the collapse of a marriage.
From a Christian worldview, marriage is far more than a private romantic arrangement. Scripture calls it a covenant – a solemn bond entered into before God, carrying obligations of fidelity, permanence, sacrifice, and mutual responsibility. A covenant is not governed merely by changing feelings or personal preference; it binds husband and wife to promises that carry moral weight beyond themselves and have consequences for children, families, and the wider community. Malachi speaks of “the wife of thy covenant” (Malachi 2:14). Jesus said, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6). That statement is not simply about divorce. Scripture recognizes that divorce may be permitted in certain circumstances, but Christ’s words still make the ideal unmistakable: marriage is meant to be permanent and is not to be casually broken or deliberately intruded upon by others. The Seventh Commandment declares plainly, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14).
No statute can make a husband or wife faithful. No lawsuit can restore lost affection. No jury verdict can put a shattered marriage back together.
Still, the law sets boundaries around what society believes is worth protecting. And it holds those who violate those boundaries accountable, with consequences consistent with the seriousness of the harm they cause.
That was the principle at stake when I first addressed this issue before North Carolina lawmakers in 2009. It remains the principle at stake amid today’s NASCAR verdicts, lawsuits against former senators, multimillion-dollar judgments, and social media campaigns.
The names in the headlines have changed.
The fundamental question has not: Is marriage still an institution our laws should recognize as worthy of protection against intentional outside interference?
Yes, it most certainly is. Marriage remains one of society’s most consequential institutions, and intentional interference with it can inflict devastating and enduring harm. If the law sets boundaries around the things society considers worthy of protection, there is no reason marriage should be treated as though it alone deserves none.
