Use Good Judgement

 Video Transcribed: Let’s talk about weed, alcohol, and other legal substances and how they can affect your child custody case. My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am an Oklahoma father’s rights attorney here at Dads.Law, where fathers are not disposable, I want to talk to you quickly about legal substances and how they could still affect your child custody case.

And I run into this from time to time when people say, “But I have my card. Why is it a problem?” Here’s the thing. If you are using weed, if you drink occasionally, you smoke tobacco or use tobacco, here’s how the court is liable to look at this, and this is also for prescription intoxicants; for example, if you take Valium, the court typically will not care what you do with your own time.

So the issue is usually not that you use it, as long as you’re not overusing and abusing it. It’s when your use of it is impacting your child. And it may sound like a distinction without a difference, but it kind of runs with me on this. The difference is this. If you go out to the bar and have a beer, you’re doing it on your own time.

It’s not interfering with parenting time; it’s not interfering with parenting duty; you’re not coming back to the house smelling of alcohol, there aren’t beer bottles or liquor bottles littered all over the place, then the court won’t care.

However, on the flip side, if your house reeks, smells like a bar, or if you’re hot boxing in the car smoking cigarettes, or if your home reeks of weed, or you have paraphernalia lying around, the court is going to care about that because now it impacts your child.

So to avoid problems, I think the wise move is to understand where the boundaries are and keep to them. If you’re going to use marijuana, use it away from your kids, don’t be impaired, don’t have a house that smells like weed, don’t have your paraphernalia out, and don’t have it visible; I think this is an essential key point.

It should be secured and not visible to the child. As far as that child’s concerned, they shouldn’t know if you use weed or not I think it is an excellent way to think about it.

And I would say to the extent the same may be confirmed with your use of alcohol and your use of tobacco if you use tobacco, is they shouldn’t know, they shouldn’t be exposed to the smoke, they shouldn’t see you impaired, they shouldn’t see spit cups everywhere or paraphernalia or have drunk beer cans or beer bottles, because that’s the kind of stuff that a court’s going to care about and that’s the kind of stuff that’s going to cause your problem.

If you use discretion, the court won’t care. I mean, most of these judges know, they’ve been around enough, they know people drink, they know people smoke, they know people are going to use marijuana because now you can get a card and use it legally.

And as long as you’re doing it with some discretion and it’s not affecting your kids, in my experience, judges don’t give a crap. It’s when it affects your child that it becomes a problem, and that’s when it implicates the best interest standard, and that’s when you’re going to have issues.

So if you want to avoid that, just be discreet. I think it’s good advice anyway, in general for life, but especially involving your children and especially involving your children when you’re in court. Be discreet. If you need a Men’s Child Custody Lawyer in Tulsa, Ok, you can find one at dads.law.