Consult an Attorney When Assistance Needed

Video Transcribed: My name is Brian L. Jackson, and I’m an Oklahoma Father’s Rights attorney with Dads.Law, we protect fathers’ rights in Oklahoma. and I’d like to talk to you a little bit about conditions of visitation and whether or not it’s possible to have them deemed waived. Conditions of visitation could be things like if visitation is supposed to be supervised, whether it’s professionally supervised or supervised by some individual. It could be a particular meeting place to pick up and drop off.

It could be something like when, one that you see sometimes, is no drinking while in the presence of the children or while you’re exercising physical custody of the children. And those are conditions that’ll be imposed by court order as what’s called a condition precedent to visitation. In other words, that condition must exist for visitation to occur, or that condition has to be done to facilitate the exchange or whatever.

Now, one thing to be aware of is if there are conditions, like if you were custodial, guys, and there are conditions on mom’s visitation, if you want those to be upheld, you need to be Johnny on the spot to enforce them. And the reason I say this is most of the time a court’s going to take the view that the court orders create a floor.

Now, that’s not always the case, but in many cases, it’s a floor. In other words, this is the bare minimum, and these are the rules we’re going to abide by if we can’t agree. But if you and she agree to do something different, the courts will generally speak, allow that provided you’re not dealing with circumstances where the children’s welfare is seriously at issue, and I’m going to talk about that issue in a second.

So, for example, if you have a condition for visitation of no drinking, and it’s not one of those deals where one side or the other is alcoholic, but rather you just don’t approve of alcohol consumption in the presence of your children, if you knowingly allow her to consume alcohol in the presence of the children, or she knowingly allows you to consume alcohol in the presence of the children, absent some facts that support the idea that this is really harmful to the child, then the court may deem that condition waived if you allow it to go on long enough.

Now, if it’s one of those deals where you are talking about a serious safety hazard and you fail to put a stop to it in a timely way, that could be considered failure to protect, and that could potentially, in an extreme case, lead down the road into DHS involvement and potentially a deprived case.

So if it’s one of those kinds of situations, for example, if you have somebody who’s alcoholic and they have a serious drinking problem, you really do need to enforce that, because if something happens, you could be found to have failed to protect your children. How do you enforce those conditions?

Well, it’s the same way as if somebody is not obeying the visitation schedule in general, which would be through contempt proceedings. You may also want to talk to an attorney about the idea of a notice of suspension of visitation if you’re talking about a condition that creates an immediate danger to the welfare of the children.

There is the legal authority under Title 43 to support that. It’s not exactly the same standard as what you would need for an emergency custody order. As a general rule though, if you are dealing with a situation like that, you want to try to get it into court as quick as you can, so that you can bring it to a judge and let the judge figure out what he or she wants to do about it rather than be seen as acting unilaterally.

One thing I always advise clients when it involves child custody, child visitation, you should never resort to self-help. And what I mean by self-help is acting unilaterally outside of the court’s purview. Courts hate that, and it can get you jammed up in a variety of ways. You can be found in contempt.

It could result in a custody change. It could result in attorney fees. It’s not a good idea. If you find yourself in that situation where the other party is not doing what they’re supposed to do, whether it’s a little thing or a big thing, this is where you want to immediately avail yourself of the court.

Let the court deal with it. And in a dire emergency, when the courts not available, obviously, do what you have to do. If you can get ahold of a lawyer before you take action, that’s always advisable, because the attorney can tell you exactly what it is you should do, and exactly how to handle the situation.

But, obviously, if you feel like your children are in immediate danger, you have to be a parent, you have to protect them from that danger. And that may mean you call the police or you call DHS. Because sometimes stuff happens during off-hours.

A lot of times custody exchange occurs at times when the court is not open, at times when the attorney’s office may not be open. And if you don’t have that person’s direct cell number, you may or may not be able to get ahold of them during the off-hours.

And if you are talking about a situation like, for example, if she shows up drunk and she’s driving or she’s high, or she’s being aggressive and violent, you may need to call DHS or you may need to call law enforcement to take action immediately.

But just bear in mind, anytime you resort to self-help, that is, if you just tell her, “Nope, you can’t take kids,” without doing anything else, you open yourself up to negative legal consequences when it does eventually go to court because it looks like you are acting in an arbitrary and capricious fashion.

You do not want to be in a situation where the only thing you have to support your position is your own word. It’s not that that’s not evidence, but the court is going to view it through the lens of you are an interested party and therefore your testimony would be self-serving.

It doesn’t necessarily make it not true, but it may mean that it carries less weight. If you ever find yourself in a situation where the other parent, the mom, is not following the custody order to the letter and it’s a problem, you need to go to dads.law, where we believe dads are not disposable, and we’ll help you out. My name is Brian L. Jackson and I’m an Oklahoma father’s rights attorney.