Visitation Could Depend on You and Your Lifestyle
Video Transcribed: Hi, my name is Jason Lyle and I am a Tulsa men’s attorney here in northeastern Oklahoma.
I wanted to talk to you about how a father can get or lose visitation rights. So whether it’s in the context of a divorce or a paternity case, obviously a divorce where you’re married or a paternity where you just have a child with another person, you naturally have visitation rights.
The problem is that if they haven’t been established and written down in a court order, they’re not enforceable. The court can’t enforce something that hasn’t been established in that court, and it can’t enforce something that isn’t defined with a defined schedule. So yes, you have visitation rights. No, they’re not enforceable. So how can you get visitation rights that are enforceable? You need a paternity lawsuit or a divorce into which the court can place the specifics of those visitation rights.
Now, the default in our state of Oklahoma is that you should have 50-50 time with this child. That often doesn’t happen, but it’s not because fathers are behind the eight ball just by virtue of being a father. I get a lot of male clients who say the courts are biased toward women. Nothing like that. It often has to do with your logistics. What is your job schedule? How far apart do you live from the mother such that if you need to take that child to daycare or school, is it an hour and a half drive to your house such that you’re having to get this child up at four in the morning to get them where they need to go? So definitely consult an experienced family law lawyer, and hopefully, if you do so early in the process, you can consult with that lawyer on what the ramifications are of things that might be in your life that might limit the time with your child.
That might even limit it to the point where you’re only getting supervised visitation. Whether you should move out of the jurisdiction or far away, and what the ramifications of that decision will be. The short answer to the question is you can get visitation rights with a family law attorney through a paternity or divorce lawsuit, and you do need to have one of those.
In fact, one of the most important times to have one is when you think everything’s okay with the baby’s mother. Because if that goes south and you have nothing that’s enforceable, you will find yourself in a position of waiting a while before you get to see that child again.
So again, my name is Jason Lyle. I’m the Dads.Law attorney for Northeastern Oklahoma. And if you have any questions for a child custody lawyer in Tulsa about this or any other family law matter, please feel free to reach out to me at Dads.Law and I would be happy to consult with you. Thank you.
