Sometimes Marriages End Rapidly Because of Some Kind of Unforeseen Event

Video Transcribed:  My name is Brian L. Jackson. I’m an attorney for fathers in Oklahoma, Today, I’d like to address kind of a thorny question. If you’re thinking of ending your marriage and you have children, can you leave and take the children with you? Or how should you handle that situation, if you want to keep custody of the kids? Well, the simplest answer is, you want to try to convince her to leave and not take the kids with her.

Legally speaking, until the court enters an order, either of you or both of you have legal custody of any children of your marriage. As a legal matter, either of you could have the kids until the court enters some kind of a temporary order. Now that being said, the court is most likely going to look the most favorably upon you as the custodian, if you as a custodian have the children in the marital home, and she’s left.

Bear in mind that if you leave and take the children, although legally without a court order, you’ve done nothing wrong, as a practical matter, what could happen is, that your soon to be ex-wife can walk into court, and tell a judge you took her children away for no reason. And if you took the children away and removed them from their school and removed them from their normal routine, that may reflect poorly on you later in front of a judge.

So this is something to consider. In that situation, the best course of action is to convince her to leave. If you have to leave and take the children, make sure you have somewhere to go, that’s a reasonably secure, stable environment. I mean, don’t take the kids if you are not going to have that, because you’ll probably wind up losing them later in court.

And again, it reflects poorly on you if you make this decision lightly. If you’re planning on either trying to get her to leave or taking the kids and leaving yourself, have a plan. Make sure you have financial resources that you can pretty quickly get alternate housing if you need to, that you can be the one to file divorce first, and establish temporary custody as quickly as you possibly can.

Sometimes marriages end rapidly because of some kind of unforeseen event. But as much as you’re able to, if you know the relationship is going south, and you know divorce is on the horizon, try to plan this ahead. Have a place to go, have financial resources to support children.

Make sure that wherever it is you’re going is a reasonable environment. What is a reasonable environment? Well, if it’s not going to be the marital home, then it needs to be someplace where if you have more than one child, and they each have their own bedroom if they’re older than like two or three, where it’s reasonably clean, reasonably safe.

If you can avoid removing them from school, that’s an important thing. If they’re in school, try not to have them change schools abruptly, especially if it’s in the middle of the school year.

Have a job lined up, if you’re not going to keep your current job. All of those things are really important because these are things that a judge will look at it. And the reality is, it’s not fair, and the law says that both parents can have equal consideration, all things being equal.

But as a practical matter, you as a man will be looked at far more stringently by a judge than the children’s mother would. So if you’re going to take the kids, then you need to have a plan ahead of time. But again, the best idea is to try to get her to leave.

So how can you get her to leave? Well, if her name’s on the deed, you can’t simply lock her out. But what you can do is, make it clear to her that you don’t want her there anymore. And you may also want to hire a good lawyer to get out ahead of it and file more as in you should hire a good lawyer to get out ahead of it and file divorce and get temporary orders that award you the marital home and the children.

If you can be heard and get in a temporary order fairly efficiently, you may end up on top of that. And the reality of it is, that courts will tend to preserve the status quo. So if you had the kids in temporary orders, you have a better chance of ending up with the kids at the end of your divorce proceedings.

That is something to keep in mind, but you should proceed carefully. And this is a situation, if you know you want to leave your wife, then you should get a lawyer involved as soon as possible.

Even if you’re not ready to file for divorce yet because they can advise you on things like how to best handle the time when you decide to physically leave, how you can make sure you’re the one who keeps the children and not her, how you can make sure that you’re the one that keeps the marital home and not her. It’s important to consult a good attorney for those things. And this is where we can help you out with that.

My name is Brian L. Jackson and I’m an Oklahoma Dads’ rights attorney, and we’ve been talking about how to keep the kids when you initiate leaving your wife, if you are looking for a Divorce Attorney for Men, visit dads.law.