Understand Your Circumstances

Video Transcribed: So how about we live in the real world? My name is Brian L. Jackson, I am a dad’s rights attorney in Tulsa, Ok, where fathers are not disposable. And today, I want to talk to you guys about having realistic expectations when you do child custody in Tulsa, mediations, or when you walk into a courtroom.

And what I mean by that, I’m not saying that you should bend at the stick, but what I am saying is understand your circumstances. If you have some things in your past that potentially are going to be relevant and could make you look bad, that’s going to affect the judge’s perception of you. If you have not been involved with your children’s lives by choice for a lengthy period of time, that’s going to affect what a judge does custody-wise. And it’s things to be aware of.

It doesn’t change the fact that you can and should expect to have an equal role in your children’s lives and to the mother. But it does mean that… And where this really becomes an important thing to understand is when you start talking about asking for full custody or where you’re in a situation like that.

So some things to be aware of. If you’ve gone a long time without being heavily involved in your child’s life, going in and immediately asking the court to uproot the child and seriously disrupt their routine for your benefit, that may not go so well for you.

Now, in the long run, the court will probably lean towards having you be equally involved if you’re not unfit and there aren’t other problems going on. But in the short term, you may or may not get that.

If you’re thinking you’re going to go for full custody and your main reasons are related to you’re mad at your ex or something, realistically, even if she was unfaithful to you, the court probably won’t seriously constrain her custodial rights just because she was unfaithful.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow. I get it. It sucks when someone cheats on you, but that’s reality. That’s what you’re dealing with. In Tulsa, it’s been my experience that when you have two approximately equal quality parents, if you end up having a custody battle, the courts usually will lean in the direction of joint custody. And even if you two hate each other, they’re probably going to be like, “Work it out. Be adults.”

When you get sole custody awards, it’s usually because you have one parent who’s better than the other parent. That’s when you get sole custody awards. Now, that’s not 100% all the time, but that’s typically how it will play out.

Now, if one parent has chosen to remove themselves from the picture for a period of time, that can affect that perception of, “Who’s the better choice? And do we do it jointly? Or do we do with this parent or that parent?” Because it establishes the status quo. And as I’ve talked about in many of my videos, that status quo can be very powerful over time. So one of the things to understand about that is don’t voluntarily be absent. And if she’s cutting you out, this is another good reason to get after it fast, or at least as quickly as you can.

The court’s less likely to hold it against you if you have pursued legal avenues against her and the reason for the lack of contact is not voluntary, but because she’s withholding out on you and you are being forced to resort to the courts. If it gets delayed because of court issues that are unrelated to you, that most likely will not be held against you.

Going into mediation. In most situations, unless you really are holding aces, if you’re going to go to mediation, you’re not going to mediate and expect her to just give you full custody. I mean, it’s not that it never happens, but it’s not likely to happen unless there are some really, really bad facts on her side to justify, to put her in a position where she doesn’t have a whole lot to fight with or to argue with you over.

I mean, it can happen, but it’s unlikely. Typically, you go to mediation if you’re going to settle it, you’re probably going to settle it on some kind of a compromise. You’re not getting everything you want. And the likely outcome of that is going to be some kind of a joint custody arrangement.

If you are earning more than her and you do joint custody, you are going to pay some child support probably. Now it may not be a lot, but you’re probably going to have some liability because there’s a couple of factors that go into figuring that out if you’re doing it by the guidelines. One of them is going to be the number of overnights each parent has. Another one is any differential in income.

So if you chop custody straight down the center, but you’re earning more than her, there’s still going to be some child support liability. That’s realistic. And if you go into a courtroom, absent some really unusual facts, and there are arguments that can be raised.

It’s not that there aren’t arguments that can be raised, there are. But barring some unusual facts, the judge is usually going to go by the guidelines. If they deviate, they typically like to deviate upward, not downward.

And if you have DHS involved in your case, getting a downward deviation out of a judge is going to be extremely difficult because they just don’t like to do that and DHS will fight you over that. So these are all things to be aware of. And as I say, it’s just being realistic about what your expectations are.

If you have unique facts and you really want to make that child support argument, you have every right to do it. And you may be able to win it, but understand that’s the courtroom equivalent to trying to hit a curveball so hard, you knock it over the back wall in the baseball diamond.

It can be done, but not easily. And it’s not the most likely outcome. And there are always factors in court that are out of your control. You don’t get control over… In Tulsa County, you have no control over which judge you draw. You have no control over what kind of day they’ve had when you go to court.

And there may be facts in your case you have no control over. So all these things are just things to be realistic about when you are setting your own internal expectations about what might come out of court.

I’m a firm believer in a fight like hell for what you can get. And this video is not intended with the idea of bend to the stick. You should always fight. And if you are being denied your rights to your children, fight back.

But understand, have realistic expectations about what that’s going to look like and what you can and can’t get done. Or what you are likely to get done and what you aren’t likely to get done, I think, is a better way of looking at that. And guys, if you need advice on a situation, I would encourage you to go to Dads.Law, where fathers are not disposable, and we’ll help you out.