Managing Car Payments Amidst Divorce: Important Insights

Hi, I’m Clint Hastings. I’m an attorney here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I focus on father’s rights. A question I get a lot is I’ve been paying for her car. Do I have to keep paying for that now that a divorce has been filed? It’s kind of a difficult answer, and it depends on individual circumstances.

This is really one where I would really need to talk to you and your individual situation and know the balance of the financial matters and payments that are occurring on the monthly routine. Now, there is no order in the Automatic Temporary Injunction, which is a set of orders put in place in every case on the divorce when it’s filed. By statute, those injunctions prohibit you from doing certain things. One is you cannot turn off insurance to a car, let’s say.

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It may be in her possession and control. She may be using it. You may have historically made the payments, but you’re tired of making them, and I certainly don’t want to make them now that there’s a divorce. However, I would not play games to where you don’t notify her, payments fall behind, she thinks you’re paying them, all of a sudden the car is going to be repossessed or anything of that nature.

If you’re wanting to say like, hey, I’ve been paying for the thing, so I’m going to come pick it up and use it myself, I wouldn’t do that either. The reason being is mainly because the judge takes note of your actions between the time the divorce is filed and when you first get a chance to get orders from the judge, which may be a three-month gap in there.

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Now, it’s not necessarily that the judge will say if you stopped paying, it kind of depends. If you’re interfering with her ability to have transportation or work, or you’re not even telling her you stopped paying, the judge isn’t going to like that and can hold that against you in several ways. The best thing to do is have your Tulsa men’s divorce attorneys start talking about the issue, talk about what can be arranged, give notice that you no longer want to pay it, and find out if there are other payments that need to be trade-offs. Don’t do anything rash or harsh during this emotional time.

Review the site tulsa.dads.law, contact a Tulsa attorney if you have questions. Call at 918-962-0900 for a low-cost initial consultation.