Never Put Your Kids in the Car With Someone Who’s Intoxicated

Video Transcribed: What should you do if your children’s mother arrives to pick up the children intoxicated? My name is Brian L. Jackson, I’m a Fathers’ rights attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and today we’re going to talk about what to do if your children’s mother arrives to pick up your children, either for a visitor or custodial exchange, and she’s intoxicated.

The first thing to know, under Title 43, you are not obliged to place your children in a car with a parent who is visibly intoxicated. However, it’s easy to say, but in the circumstances, if you and she are the only ones there, and you refuse to put the kids in the car and do nothing else, it’s going to ultimately be boiling down to your word against hers when she takes you to court.

So what you should do, obviously don’t put your kids in the car with someone who’s intoxicated. That kind of goes without saying. You should call law enforcement. If she is indeed intoxicated, then she’s committing a crime called driving under the influence.

That is a criminal misdemeanor, and you should report that, and if it is indeed true, she’ll get arrested, more than likely. If it’s not for DUI, then the other crime she could be potentially committing is called actual physical control, which carries similar penalties.

But in either case, if she’s truly intoxicated, she’ll probably get arrested. But the other reason to call the police, and it’s not so much about getting her arrested as it is to make a record of the fact this happened.

The next thing you need to do, as soon as you reasonably are able to, get ahold of a lawyer. You want to do that as quickly as you possibly can if you ever find yourself in that situation because you can expect she’s going to do the same thing.

So get a lawyer as soon as possible, and what you should do is go to dads.law and talk to one of our attorneys if you find yourself in this situation, and do so quickly, because time is of the essence. You want to be the one that gets to an attorney first, if possible, and that attorney can advise you about how to handle your particular circumstances.

My name is Brian L. Jackson, I am a fathers’ rights attorney, and we’ve been talking about what you should do if your children’s mother arrives at custody exchange intoxicated. I appreciate your time and attention and thank you very much.