Pick a Place Accordingly

Video Transcribed: The marriage is over. You’re splitting up and you’re looking for a place. Are you really going to move into that crackerbox apartment and then expect the kids to spend the night there?

Hello, my name is Brian L. Jackson. I am a Men’s divorce attorney Tulsa, OK with Dads.Law. Today we’re going to talk about housing, and this is an important factor that I think gets overlooked sometimes in divorce proceedings is where you move to when you move out. If she’s going to stay in the marital home, you’re going to have to find a new place to live. Right?

Well, if you’ve got three kids and you move into a studio apartment, there’s a problem there if you want to do joint custody and share time. And we here at Dads.Law heavily favors and advocates joint custody, because we believe that kids deserve to have both parents in their lives and to have equal access to both parents.

And that requires joint custody. But as a realistic matter, if you move into a studio apartment like you’re a bachelor again, you’re going to have a hard time persuading a court to let you have equal time with those kids because the court is not going to want to have a situation where you’ve got two or three kids sleeping on the couch together because you only have the one bedroom. So this is something to keep in mind when you’re looking at housing after you move out.

Now I do understand the reality of the situation is that housing is expensive, even in Oklahoma. And we’re lucky we have a pretty low cost of living in this state compared to a lot of the rest of the country. But even still, housing is expensive.

It’s easy for a decent-sized house or apartment to spend over a grand a month just in rent. That’s easy to do. And the reality of it is not all of us have the ability to pay that, plus pay all our debts from the marriage, plus take care of our daily, weekly, monthly maintenance things like food, utilities, the phone, any debts you have, because you’re still going to have to pay those things.

But it’s worth considering getting that more expensive place if you want to do joint custody, because you need to have a place for the kids, and you definitely do not want to serve up an argument to her attorney for why she should get full custody, and you should get the shaft.

So, understand when you’re thinking about where do you want to move to, think about it in terms of you’re a parent with kids that will be living with you at least some of the time, so pick a place accordingly.

Spend the money, and that will position you better. And don’t think, “Well, I’ll just get the small place while we’re getting divorced and then move somewhere else later.” That’s not a good idea and I’ll tell you why it’s not a good idea. It’s not a good idea because of the whole status quo factor. During the pendency of your divorce, the court’s going to enter temporary orders.

Temporary orders will control where the children live, where the children go to school, who the children live with for what percentage of the time. If she’s able to get a very favorable ruling at temporary orders because your place is tiny and either the judge or you don’t want to make your children sleep on the couch three days out of the week, then that will set her up to have that same order entered later when you get to a final divorce decree.

And it’ll make it harder for you to persuade the court to do something different because that’s been the way it’s always been done is the way the court’s going to think about it. And then most judges are going to look at you and if they don’t say it, they’re going to be thinking, “All right. Show me why I should disrupt this arrangement. It seems to be working so far.”

So if you want to get a good favorable temporary order, which you need, then you better have good housing. If you need help with a situation like that, go to dads.law, where we will fight for your father’s rights in Tulsa.