You Have the Right to Know Where Your Child Is Located

Video Transcribed: My name is Brian L. Jackson, and I’m an Oklahoma Father’s Rights attorney with Dads.Law, we protect fathers’ rights in Oklahoma. I want to talk about if you’re a non-custodial, what type of information do you have a right to as a non-custodial parent?

So, one of the first things that the statutes provide for is you have a right to know where your child is located at any given time. In other words, the residence of the child, and you have a right to know how to contact them.

Now, courts can potentially constrain that right if you’re dealing with a situation where there has been domestic violence, stalking, or harassment, but as a general rule, you do have the right to know where your child lives and to know how to contact your child.

You also have a right to access your child’s educational records. Now, I’ve seen cases where schools will try to push back on this if the custodial parent tells the school that you are not allowed to have access to that information and sometimes it means you got to get a lawyer involved to go and twist some arms.

Because some schools, if the custodial parent tells them not to talk to you, they won’t but as a legal matter, absent a court order to the contrary, you have a right to that information. You have a right to see your child’s grades, you have a right to know what the school schedule is, when they’re off, when they’re not off, what activities they’re participating in, all of that, you have a right to know. You have a right to see your child’s medical records, again, unless there’s a court order to the contrary.

Now, this is another situation that can sometimes become a problem because you’ll have custodial parents who will tell medical providers not to talk to the non-custodial parent, and many times, if they’re told that they will refuse until they’re specifically instructed by a court that they have to. And there are reasons why they do that.

I’m not here to trash the medical profession or the school system. If they’re told by a custodial parent not to communicate with the other parent, it puts them in a difficult position because if they do communicate and it turns out that they were not to do so, then it could be looking at some liability under federal law and under state law.

On the other hand, though, it is actionable if they refuse to talk to you and you have a right to that information. There are remedies, you can seek out. The easiest one, honestly, sometimes it’s just to have an attorney make a phone call because many times if they get a call from an attorney that will change their minds, or they’ll give you information about what you need to do to get into the loop.

Most of the time, the schools and the medical professionals, don’t really have a dog in this fight, but they will protective of their own interests, which is to say that they’re not going to risk sharing information if they think there might be a problem that could lead to them being liable.

Those are some examples of things you have a right to know. Obviously, you have a right to know if your child is going to be going out of state. A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that they have to consent.

That’s not necessarily the case unless you have a court order that specifically demands that, but if the child is going to leave the state for vacation, then you do have the right to know where they’re going and how to contact them.

Now, if the vacation takes the child out of the country, then in that event, you definitely have the right to know, and there may be some argument that you have the right to consent or not. If the child’s going to be permanently relocated more than 75 miles from your home or from wherever they were living originally, then you have the right to written notice of that relocation with at least 30 days lead time and you have the right to object.

The details of that are a discussion for another time, but suffice it to say that you do have rights in that situation and it’s important for you to exercise them. If you find yourself in a situation where you are dealing with an uncooperative school, an uncooperative physician, or another medical provider, or you’re dealing with an uncooperative custodial parent who won’t share information with you, then you should go to dads.law where fathers are not disposable, and we’ll be happy to help you out guys, thanks. My name is Brian L. Jackson and I’m an Oklahoma father’s rights attorney.