Parents Need to Follow Custody Orders to Avoid Conflict
Video Transcribed: Hi, my name is Attorney Jason Lyle, and I am a dad’s rights lawyer in Oklahoma. I get a question a lot, which is, can the police help me if I have a custody issue and I call them?
So say, for example, it is your night to have your child or children and you go over to the mother’s house or the other parent’s house and they just simply refuse, or they’ve communicated that to you in advance, that they’re going to refuse, and your inclination is to say, “Well, this is a court order,” if you have a court order. “And she or the other parent should follow it, so I’m going to call the police.” I am here to tell you that in nearly every law enforcement person I’ve ever met at any time I’ve experienced that through my cases, the law enforcement’s response is, “This is a court issue. I cannot help you with that.”
Law enforcement requires a very specific type of order to intervene on the level most people think that they should. It’s called a writ of assistance, and if they don’t have a writ of assistance or a writ habeas corpus, those are orders to bring a child to the other parent or to bring a child to the court, they typically will not intervene at the level that you think that they should. This can be very frustrating for parents who are like, “I have a right. It’s not being enforced.” So what you need to do is to call your lawyer. If you don’t have a good family law lawyer, you need one because there is a very right way and a very wrong way to go about enforcing visitation orders. Now, the court does have laws on your side that say if you aren’t receiving the visitation that you had court ordered, then you need to file a motion and it should be heard within 20 days.
So it’s a relatively short process compared to a lot of the things that we do, but there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way. The other thing is, if you have no court order, you’re even in a further deficit as far as what needs to be done. You need to contact a good family law lawyer to get you the court order that can be enforced regarding your visitation.
Again, if you have any questions or problems with this or any other family law issue, my name is Attorney Jason Lyle. I am a child custody attorney in Tulsa, and you can get ahold of me via my contact information on Dads.Law.
