This Pleading Is Misused to Gain Custody or Gain Control of Joint Custody
Video Transcribed: What is the single most misused pleading in the family court contest? My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am a dad’s defense attorney in Tulsa here with Dads.Law where fathers are not disposable.
To answer the question, protective orders. I’m going to go on record and start by saying that there are situations where protective orders are absolutely appropriate and necessary. However, the unfortunate thing is that they are frequently misused as a tool to gain custody or gain control of a joint residency. It’s relatively simple to get an emergency granted, and are usually granted unless you’re talking about exceptionally weak pleadings. The moment the PO gets granted, unfortunately, it puts the party who is at the business end of that PO at a disadvantage in things like the custody litigation position of a household.
What can you do about it? Well, from a starting standpoint, if you are nearing the end of a relationship and things are getting rough, then you need to start being very acutely aware of what’s coming out of your mouth, what’s coming out of your phone in the form of text messages, what kind of things you’re putting on social media and whatnot. Be very careful not to be doing things that could be framed in a way that would make you look like a problem. Obviously, you don’t want to let her push your buttons and get you angry and have you really lose it in front of her either, because again, those are the kind of things that will get you a protective order.
If you are already facing a protective order, first thing obviously, once you’re served, don’t violate it. There are a lot of guys who get tempted to think they can just talk to her and work it out. She serves you with a protective order, talking is over. Don’t talk to her. Do appear in court. You want to make sure you don’t miss your court date. Get counsel because protective orders should be taken seriously. I’ve said this in previous videos, they carry more serious consequences than a lot of criminal charges. I’m going to talk about that some more in a future video, but you should take it seriously. You want to try to have your attorney move it forward as quickly as possible so that you are not allowing her to establish a status quo by weaponizing that protective order.
I’m also a fan, and this isn’t always possible, but I’m also a fan of if you were served with a protective order and you’re looking at a future family law proceeding, if you can do it, it’s sometimes better to deal with the PO first then file your divorce or your paternity after the protective order is gone. I can tell you the major reason why I’m a firm believer in that idea is quite frankly protective orders are facts played. In other words, she’s got to spell out in that petition exactly what happened that she believes her grounds for a PO. The advantage of that is that you can then have your attorney go into court and hold her to those pleadings. The scope of a protective order hearing is fairly narrow in comparison to say a temporary orders hearing or even an emergency custody hearing where you have a lot more things that can be brought in.
A typical tactic with protective orders, and you’ll see a lot of lawyers who prosecute them try this, and a lot of pro se litigants try this, the tactic is going in there, sling as much mud at the wall, in other words, tell the judge as many bad things about the other party as you can come up with that you can get away with in the hopes that something upsets the judge enough to get them to sign that order. That is a routine tactic, and it is harder to do it in protective order court than it is to do it during a temporary order hearing or to do it during an emergency custody hearing. If you have a good lawyer on your side, then you can start using the rules of evidence and procedure to keep all that extra crap out and just deal with whatever the allegations are in the pleading.
With that in mind, that does bring me around to the close of this video where I will say, if you are served with a protective order, you need a good lawyer. One place you can find a good Oklahoma protective order attorney is at Dads.Law where fathers are not disposable.
