Collateral Witnesses Have Their Benefits
Video Transcribed: the Tulsa Fathers Rights Attorney, joined here with Oklahoma Fathers Rights Attorney Brian Jackson. Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about collateral witnesses.
Basically, what collateral witnesses are, are third parties, preferably disinterested third parties who can help prove up your narrative in your custody case or your protective order case.
If you’re trying to tell the court for example that you should have custody because mom’s a party girl, you want to have more than just your word for it because the judge knows you’re an interested party and your word is going to be bluntly speaking, self-serving. And it’s not to say you’re not telling the truth, but the judge is going to view it through that lens.
So the purpose of this video is to assist you in identifying collateral witnesses for your attorneys to use, to prove your narrative in court. And obviously, each individual situation is going to have specific people which will prove your narrative. Is she not showing up to the school to be involved in the education of the children? Has she been showing up to doctor’s visits? These are people that can testify as to her participation in important life decisions for that child.
Another area that you might look into is bad friends. Who does she hang out with that you don’t want her to? That she probably shouldn’t be, that’s got some history, or that she just goes out and gets rip-roaring drunk with. That’s the one we want to call. Other people may have been involved in emergency situations.
Unfortunately, parents sometimes have to show up because she was supposed to pick the kid up at school, but she was drunk. Your mother may be a great witness to that particular situation. DHS may have shown up because the school called somebody about the kid showing up dirty or with the same clothes on.
The police may have arrived on the scene at that time that she decided she was going to smack you in the face. All of these people are witnesses that are not you that will tend to prove up your narrative in court and make you look credible and make her look un-credible. Any others?
Actually, and this will sound counterintuitive, but sometimes a good witness to call, if she’s got her new man and the new man is a guy for reasons you don’t like him. As long as there’s something that is objective, maybe you want to call him as a witness.
He’s not going to have anything nice to say about her, but if he’s got a checkered past, he’s still going to have to tell the truth about that. And you can confront him with, okay, you have this history, here’s the documentation. And what does that show? Her judgment. Who she’s bringing the kids around. And that’s going to be relevant to the judge.
Absolutely. Some of the best witnesses are when you’re talking about a neutral, disinterested third party, like a teacher. You have a teacher come in and say, “Hey, dad was there all the time. Mom never showed up.” That’s great for you because the teacher does not have a dog in this fight and they carry a lot of respect, so the judge is liable to put a lot of weight on what they have to say.
Now through the process, there are times when witnesses are inserted in the process, and these are professionals generally, sometimes parenting coordinators, guardian ad litems, visitation supervisors, other folks who are professionals, who are going to really be great witnesses as to your ability to parent or your character issues. Sometimes these witnesses really need to be impeached. God, Brian, we know we’ve had to take that a guardian ad litem or two in our day.
But at the same time, they can be helpful for you if she’s really bad, or if she’s got some problems. So, another idea is to think about opportunities that you can use visitation supervisors, guardian ad litems, or parenting coordinators in order to create another witness in your case that’s going to be able to provide a lot of the same things you would, except they’re disinterested.
This has been Fathers’ rights attorney Brian Jackson talking to you a little bit about ancillary and collateral witnesses and how that can help you prove your narrative in court. Thanks for your time.
