Meet Caldwell Barefoot
Caldwell was born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, where his father practiced law for over 45 years before his passing in 2012, and where his mother still resides. After graduating from New Hanover High School, Caldwell attended Wake Forest University and received his BA in History in 1989. Following almost two years in Texas where he worked in property management, Caldwell married in 1991 and returned to North Carolina to live in Raleigh while he attended law school. Caldwell has lived in Raleigh ever since. He is the father of three sons and has coached the soccer teams for two of his sons. He also participated in the Y-Guides program with each of his children.
In 1994, Caldwell received his J.D., cum laude, from Campbell University's Norman A. Wiggins School of Law, where he served as an Editor of the Campbell Law Review. Chief Justice Burley B. Mitchell, Jr. of the North Carolina Supreme Court hired Caldwell for a one-year clerkship upon his graduation from law school. When he completed his clerkship in 1995, Caldwell began his career in private practice with Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton, LLP, one of the twenty largest law firms in North Carolina, where he became a partner and remained until he founded Barefoot Family Law in 2010.
Throughout his career, Caldwell has focused his practice entirely on Family Law. After successfully completing the Specialist exam in 2005, Caldwell became a North Carolina Board Certified Family Law Specialist, a distinction shared by fewer than 200 Family Law attorneys in the entire State of North Carolina. In addition to achieving the designation of being a Board Certified Family Law Specialist, Caldwell has: been listed among the “Legal Elite” for Family Law in Business North Carolina Magazine; been listed among North Carolina Super Lawyers for Family Law; been listed in Best Lawyers in America; and received the highest rating (AV) from Martindale-Hubbell. For 2012, Caldwell received the most votes of any family lawyer in the State in the balloting for Business North Carolina’s “Legal Elite”, which resulted in his becoming a member of the Legal Elite Hall Of Fame in 2013, an honor shared with less than ten other family lawyers in North Carolina. In 2015, for the third consecutive year, Super Lawyers named Caldwell a Top 100 lawyer in North Carolina.
Caldwell has served as the Managing Editor for the book North Carolina Family Law Marital Claims (Second Edition). In 2014 Caldwell completed a three-year term serving on the Grievance Committee for Wake County’s Tenth Judicial District and was recently the co-chair of the Alimony Committee for the North Carolina Bar Association’s Family Law Council.
