Do Not Approach This Issue to Be Punitive
Video Transcribed: Hello, my name is Jason Lile, and I am a Tulsa Dads Lawyer, and I wanted to go over a situation or an issue that comes up from time to time in my cases when I’m representing a man and that is if your ex, whether it’s an estranged wife or girlfriend, estranged wife specifically, or if you’re already divorced and your ex-wife decides to cohabitate with somebody, there is a specific statute in Oklahoma about that says … Its Title 43, Section 123 that says you cannot remarry or cohabitate for six months after your divorce is granted in the state of Oklahoma.
Now that being said, oftentimes divorces obviously happen because people already have a new partner before they file for a divorce, and they’re wanting to marry that person right away and they’ll get remarried. Other times, they just move in with a boyfriend or a girlfriend since it just says cohabitation, it doesn’t identify a gender. What can you do about that?
Well, first of all, I want you to know that you should not approach that issue just to be punitive. If you honestly think that cohabitation is harming your children and your lawyer and you can come up with some evidence as to how that’s harming your children, other than just the fact of it being harmful, then you should consider going forward with trying to enforce that law.
The second thing is that you shouldn’t just go to the police right away because that’s like pulling a trigger that you can’t unpull. Because if your spouse gets in criminal trouble for that and you eventually want to settle it, that will make it very difficult to do that because now she has a prosecution on her hands.
Now that’s not to say if your other remedy, which is to go to the divorce court, doesn’t work out for you that you shouldn’t consider criminal prosecution. But as with all family law issues, you want to do what’s best for your children, and the softer option is often the better option if it works.
As a trial lawyer, I’m happy to litigate and I think that’s what needs to be done many times. But the softer option might be to discuss with your ex, discuss with her who that person is, discuss with her ways in which you can soften the impact of that new person in your children’s lives, and find out who that person is with regard to their background, their behavior, where they work, maybe look for a compromise. Like maybe that person could just wait until the six months is up like the law requires to just be living there if that’s possible.
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.
