Car Payments During Divorce: What’s Next?

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. But it doesn’t say, well, you have to keep paying for a car. 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.

Understanding Your Rights and Responsibilities

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.

Take Action and Seek Legal Advice

Now, it’s not necessarily that the judge will say if you stopped paying, it kind of depends. Again, 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 attorneys start talking about the issue, talk about what can be arranged, give notice that you no longer want to pay it, find out if there’s other payments that need to be trade-offs, or maybe she’s going to cut off something she’s been paying of yours. It just depends on the situation.

So you need to work that out, but don’t do anything rash, don’t do anything harsh. I know it’s an emotional time, but don’t just stop doing things that you’ve routinely done. I hope that helps. Visit Dads.Law, let us know if you have questions.