Navigating Potential Legal Consequences during Difficult Communication

Hello, my name is Brian L. Jackson. I’m a Tulsa father’s rights attorney here with Dads.Law where fathers are not disposable. So we talked last time about communicating with the ex and I want to talk to you a little bit about what to do if communications go wrong.

Let’s say she did push your buttons one too many times and you did say something stupid and now you’re dealing with potential legal consequences of having said something stupid. So what do you do about that?

First of all, if you are in the middle of litigation, you probably want to make sure you keep your whoever your legal counsel is informed of what happened. You’re always better off for them to know than not know and get blindsided. The other thing is if the situation is going off the rails, the smart thing to do is get out of the situation. So that means stop the conversation or if it’s in person, you walk away. You don’t want to let the situation escalate further.

Be Prepared to Take Responsibility

I would say also be prepared that if you did say or do something stupid, be prepared that you may have to own up responsibility. Now there is an exception to that and that would be if you did something that would just that would constitute a crime and obviously if it’s something that’s potentially criminal, you would want to exercise your right to remain silent until until you’re fairly sure that nothing criminal is coming down the pike and or it’s already been disposed of. But if you do something stupid, you’re usually better off admitting it and saying hey that was a mistake versus trying to deny it or rationalize it because the judge if there’s no question you did it, the judge is going to want to know that you recognize what you did was wrong and that it’s something that was inappropriate and shouldn’t happen and you’re not going to do it again.

And the way to do that is is the old mea culpa. My bad. Obviously it’s important to show the judge that you’re actually serious about that and usually sometimes that means you have to do other things like take a parenting class or something else like that. But the point is is you want to be really really clear with the judge about the fact that you recognize you made a mistake and you’re taking affirmative steps to correct behavior.

Take Action and Seek Legal Assistance

I always recommend telling your lawyer and if you don’t have a lawyer at that point you definitely want to get one. And if you need a lawyer, one place you can find a lawyer is at Dads.Law where fathers are not disposable.