Don’t Sit On Your Rights

Video Transcribed: So you haven’t had contact with your kid for a while. Maybe she hasn’t been letting you see the kid, or something else happened, but you haven’t seen your child for whatever reason. How do you address that problem?

My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am a dads’ rights lawyer in Oklahoma with dads.law. Today, let’s talk about when you’ve been absent from your child’s life for a while and what can happen.

Let’s say that you, for whatever reason, whether it’s your fault or not, you haven’t seen your child for a stretch, say it’s been six months, maybe even it’s been a year, and now you want to get back in there, and she’s giving you pushback because you haven’t seen the child. How do you address that?

One thing I would say to start with is to understand that you’re probably not going to convince a court to immediately go to split time, immediately go to an expanded visitation schedule, especially with younger children that if the child doesn’t know you real well, or may not remember you.

Older children may be in a different situation, and as they age, it becomes more specific to that child. But you may not… Understand as a starting point, you may not get the final schedule that you want right out of the chute.

So what that means is you should be thinking about what’s called a ramp-up schedule. In other words, you might start with more limited visitation and ramp it up over time as you have successful visitations. When this situation arises, many attorneys for women will argue that there needs to be reunification therapy. That comes with certain pros and cons.

If you have a professional involved and get a good professional, they can help fix the situation so that it’s fixed right. In my opinion, the problem with reunification therapy is, first of all, expensive. That is a factor for guys. Your kids come first, and I do not doubt that, but if you just don’t have the funds, you just don’t have the funds. That’s one problem.

Another problem is it can make the process take longer, like significantly longer, while the therapist does their own thing and figures out when visits are appropriate. A third problem is that you may get a situation where you get a therapist who becomes overly friendly to one side or the other and becomes an obstacle.

So my personal opinion is I think reunification therapy is a judgment call based on the facts on the ground, and I think that you need someone who can really look at that and analyze it and say, “Okay, do we need to go to that extreme or not?”

Because I think in some cases, you could probably just do straight supervised visitation for a little bit and let the kid get used to you and then move forward. Or with an older child, that may not even be necessary. It just depends. I think it’s a judgment call, but I don’t think it should be automatic. I don’t think you should agree to it automatically without talking to somebody first.

One thing I do want to tell you guys is that fault is a factor. If she’s been denying you access, you go in and file your motion to enforce; certainly, it is a factor. The court should take that into account.

However, suppose you think you’ll walk into court and immediately walk out with a normalized visitation schedule when there’s been a long period, a hiatus. In that case, you may be sorely disappointed by that because the thing the court is going to look at is because this is what they’re required to look at, is the best interest of that child.

So you may successfully prosecute a motion to enforce, have the court tell mom, “Okay, you’re going to do this now.” But, what the court actually says, as far as you’re going to do this now, may not be exactly what you think it’s going to be.

It may not be that you go immediately back to a joint custody schedule, or you get a joint custody schedule. It may be that you have to take a ramp-up period because of the needs of that child. That is something to keep in mind if the child’s needs are going to be a big factor.

This brings me to another point I want to raise in connection with this. This is why it is an emergency when you are denied access to your child. It needs to be addressed quickly because the more time goes by without you taking action, with you sitting on your rights, the more likely you are to be looking at a situation where there is a prolonged ramp-up period before you get to a normalized visitation schedule. It gives her additional opportunity to cause you problems if that’s her pleasure.

If she’s telling you to go F off and deny visitation, go litigate it like yesterday. Don’t sit on your rights because you could end up paying for it later.

Now, if you are dealing with a situation where you’ve had a prolonged absence from your child’s life, you need a good lawyer. If you have questions about any of that, if you ever need a child support attorney in Oklahoma or a father’s Child Custody Lawyer in Tulsa Ok, you can find one at Dads.Law.