You Need to Get Evidence and Fill Out an Affidavit
Video Transcribed: Hello, my name is Jason Lile, and I am a father’s rights lawyer in Oklahoma.
I wanted to talk to you right now about what a father can do to get emergency custody of a child and when would that ever be necessary. So if you have a child and you’re not married to the mother, we’ll start there. You need a paternity lawsuit and you need to start that paternity lawsuit with an emergency if the child is in imminent danger of physical or emotional harm.
What do we mean by imminent? That means it can’t be something the mother did a year ago, it means something that is causing that child to be in immediate danger of harm. You need to consult a lawyer who’s experienced with these things because there is a requirement that you fill out an affidavit, which is a sworn written statement about how you have personal knowledge of why that child is in harm. It can’t be your friend who told you that the mother was doing drugs or anything like that. It typically has to be a personal knowledge.
If you have a divorce decree already, or you’re getting a divorce or you already have an existing paternity lawsuit, that makes that a little bit easier as far as the procedure goes. But you can get emergency custody if there’s a circumstance where the child is in imminent danger of physical or emotional harm. Obviously, emotional harm is pretty subjective. One person’s emotional harm is another person’s strict parenting or whatever. You need to consult a knowledgeable lawyer so they can parse that out for you as to what your chances are in court.
The other issue is that there may be times when you might be reluctant to file for emergency custody which can get you into trouble with DHS. If you should be protecting a child from something in the mother’s life and you don’t, you can be accused of and charged even by the district attorney with failure to protect that child. So please consult an attorney if you are in a situation where you even think that the child might be in danger of imminent physical or emotional harm.
Again, my name is Jason Lile and I’m the Dads.Law attorney. You can reach me at that address here in Northeastern Oklahoma if you need help from a child custody attorney in Tulsa, and I would be happy to consult with you about that or any other family matter law that you might need help with.
