Consult a Fathers Rights Attorney When Assistance Needed

Video Transcribed:  My name is Brian L. Jackson, I’m a Dads’ rights attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and this is the second part in the discussion I started recently to answer the question, what should fathers do if the child’s mother has taken the children out of state?

We left off last time talking about if you’re married to her and she’s just left you and disappeared with the kids.

I wanted to continue with that discussion a little bit, and then move into what to do if you already have a custody order.

The obvious question that can come up is, okay, if you want to file the divorce, obviously, you need to be able to find her to serve her, so what about if she’s disappeared and you don’t know where she is?

Well, you still want to get a really good lawyer, you want to get something going in Oklahoma courts, as soon as you possibly can.

A good lawyer would be at the right law firm, will be able to find the private investigator, and then exercise other resources to help you locate the children’s mother, get her served, figure out where the children are, and make sure they’re safe.

In the case, if their children are in immediate danger, obviously that would be a time to contact law enforcement and child welfare.

If you have a situation, for example, if you know your soon-to-be ex-wife has a history of violence, criminal history, drugs, anything like that, then it would be important to get law enforcement and child welfare involved.

Within the state of Oklahoma, that would be the department of human services. In that situation, as we talked about last time, you would have the ability to …

If you can establish, there’s an imminent threat to the children to pursue an emergency order, but if she’s disappeared and you don’t know where to find her, this is when you get law enforcement involved. This is when you get child welfare involved.

So, what if you have a custody order and she’s just vanished? It’s her time and she just has vanished and she’s denying you access to the kids.

Again, as I’ve said several times now, and I hate to beat a dead horse, got to get a good attorney, got to do that. And this situation, you have some legal remedies that are Oklahoma law.

If it’s already been filed in Oklahoma court and you have a custody order, the first thing you want to do is have your attorney file a motion to enforce visitation.

You can also file contempt, but the reason you want to go for the motion to enforce visitation is that there is a specific statutory clock on that that moves those along lot faster than general contempt.

And the court has the power under the law to also take specific remedial action, whereas contempt is generally coercive. The court can do things like fine mom or in an extreme case, contempt does carry jail time.

However, the motion to enforce may be more direct to the point as far as resolving the problem that allowed this to occur.

Under a motion to enforce, the court has the power to award makeup time and in extreme cases, it does have the power and courts will do this in extreme cases, it does have the power to modify custody.

That would also be something to talk to an attorney about as well as a motion to modify custody and have custody awarded to you.

Under title 43, which is the marriage and divorce statutes of Oklahoma. Parents’ willingness or lack of willingness to allow the other parent to have a relationship with the children and to foster that relationship and to comply with visitation orders is relevant in custody litigation.

So, to recap the things you would want your attorney to do is one, look into filing a motion to enforce visitation if you have visitation. Two, citations for contempt. And three, you would probably also want to look at a motion to modify.

Now, how about if you had custody and she took the kids and disappeared? Well, in that situation, you may want to pursue a pickup order or a red in order to obtain the children back into your custody once her time is gone.

And again, this would also be where you talk to your attorney about a motion to modify. And if she’s threatening to take the kids, obviously, the solution would be to look at the supervised visitation.

And as we talked about last time, any of these actions would be done in an Oklahoma court, but whatever orders are produced, if she’s taking the kids out of state, you will have to go to a foreign state’s court in order to have those enforced. Or at least you’d want to talk to a foreign attorney to have those enforced.

And because I’m an Oklahoma attorney, you would need to talk to someone who is an expert in that area of law, which I’m not.

And I’m not going to begin to speculate as to how you might enforce it in any given jurisdiction. But you would need to consult with someone who does know the law in that area, a legal professional.

So, unfortunately, the downside to this whole process is, it could get costly. The good news is though, that in any of these situations, you do have remedies, you do have rights.

And there are attorneys such as myself who are willing to stand up for your rights and pursue those remedies on your behalf. It is important though that you move very quickly.

As with the situation where you’re filing for divorce, the longer you delay, the harder it’s going to be for you to enforce your rights and recover your children, and the more likely it’s going to be that a judge might believe that you have acquiesced.

That is that you agreed through your actions, if not through your words. So it’s important to move quickly.

And in that spirit, I would encourage you, if you find yourself facing a situation like this, to go to dads.law and talk to one of our legal professionals who can give you advice as to what you specifically can do in your situation. See, these are serious situations and they need to be dealt with in a serious manner.

My name is Brian L. Jackson, I am a Tulsa dads’ rights attorney, I am here to help and we’ve been talking about what to do in the event that your child’s mother takes your child and disappears.

And this is part two of that discussion. Appreciate your time and attention, and I hope you have a nice day.