North Carolina employs equitable distribution in dividing marital (community) property as a result of divorce. Instead of a strict fifty-fifty split, in which each spouse receives exactly one-half of the marital or separate property, equitable distribution looks at a variety of factors including, but not limited to the following:

• Earning power of the spouses
  
• Separate property of the spouses
  
• One spouse having done all the work to acquire the property
  
• The value that one spouse contributed as the home-maker for the family
  
• Economic fault of one spouse in wasting and dissipating marital property
  
• Duration of the marriage
  
• Age and relative health of the spouses
  
• The responsibility for providing for children of the marriage
  
• Spousal abuse or marital infidelity