Have an Advocate Argue in Court
Video Transcribed: My name is Attorney Jason Lile, and I am an Oklahoma Fathers Rights lawyer. I wanted to talk to you about newborn babies. As a dad of a newborn, if you’re going through a divorce or a separation from the baby’s mother, it can often be a very daunting task to figure out joint custody.
Now, obviously, joint custody is the holy grail in a client’s mind as to what you want in a court proceeding, because you don’t want to lose rights to your child. I hear that a lot, but what exactly is joint custody?
Well, let’s start with joint legal custody. Legal custody means decision-making authority. Now, if you’ve ever been around a baby before, or even if you haven’t, I can tell you from experience I have four myself, that there are not a lot of day-to-day decisions that go beyond just daily care.
They need to be fed. They need to get naps. They need shelter. They need clothes, but those aren’t really discretionary. You can’t feed the baby. You can’t not cloth the baby. So there aren’t a lot of joint decisions to be made once the parents are separated. But another thing that we mean by custody is physical custody when you have visitation with your child.
One of the things that are difficult for men in custody or divorce cases with very young children, and infants is breastfeeding. If the baby is being breastfed, it creates a logistical problem for the parents to pass the child back and forth often or for lengthy periods of time.
So a good lawyer should be able to A, advise you that, hey, there’s a little bit of an uphill battle for a baby that’s breastfeeding, or that’s very small. But that B, that does not mean that you aren’t entitled to joint custody and split time with that child.
It means that you need to have a skilled attorney present the argument correctly and negotiate with the other lawyer or present evidence of the fact that you can accomplish joint physical custody with an infant. It might mean pumping.
It might mean checking with that child’s pediatrician to see if the formula’s appropriate for that baby or supplementing. There are ways that this can be handled and the father’s rights lawyer should not be squeamish about discussing breastfeeding, because in my experience it’s often the thing that might keep that father from having split time.
The second most common thing that keeps him from having split time is just the accusation from the mother. Well, I do all the bathing and I do all the feeding and I’ve done all the care. And now what? He wants to take the baby from me.
That is an incorrect posture to go into court with. And the answer that a good lawyer should be able to present is we don’t have what we had before. Yes. You had different roles before when you were together.
Now, you’re not together. And yes, you did do all the bathing, feeding, and clothing, but that does not mean that my client, the father, is not qualified to do those things. And the only way we’re ever going to work out him doing those things is to let him do it.
And that’s why you want to have an advocate argue in court successfully for you. So for help with this or if you have any other questions about what it’s like to be in a custody case, please feel free to contact the Oklahoma father’s rights attorney or the Oklahoma Child Custody Attorney for Men at Dads.Law.
