You’re Required to Follow the Court Ordered Visitation
Video Transcribed: My name is Jason Lile, and I am a Dads Rights lawyer in Tulsa. I wanted to talk to you today about one of the most difficult problems I deal with as a family law lawyer and the litigants I deal with.
In fact, I have a case right now, I just spoke to a client today about this matter, and it hasn’t gotten any easier after all these years of doing this. It’s this. What do you do when a child is 12 or older or so … I say 12 because that’s the age at which in Oklahoma a child can express a preference in court … he Just refuses, absolutely refuses, does not want to go see the other parent? The answer is that it is a very hard problem to solve.
If you have a child 12 or older who simply does not want to see the other parent, you have limited options to make them do that. You’re required to follow the court order about visitation under the law, but do you what? Handcuff the child into the car and drop them off at the other parent’s house.
Obviously, that’s not practical. If there are legitimate reasons in your opinion or, according to that child, why they don’t want to go over there, emotional distress, physical distress, those might need to be handled by an investigation.
But if it’s just a broken relationship with that other parent, the difficult answer is that the other parent, and of course you, need to repair that relationship between the child and the other parent. That is not simple. If it were simple, we wouldn’t have professional counselors. We wouldn’t be in therapy for years over such things.
There is an instrument that the court has called reconciliation counseling. In my experience, that is a very difficult thing to do. Reconciling a relationship through counseling is very hard, especially with a child.
Ultimately, if there is a broken relationship between one parent and the child and the child doesn’t want to go see the other parent, the court can admonish the parent that should be sending the child, but ultimately they can’t enforce it beyond saying it’s supposed to be that this child’s visiting the other parent, it’s supposed to be that you have to make them available.
You can make them available, but ultimately, you can’t make them go in many cases. It’s a problem that really counselors are more equipped to solve than courts and lawyers.
If you have any questions as to how to solve this problem, and more importantly, how to protect yourself if you’re the parent who is being accused of not sending the child over or you’re the parent who wants to see the child and the child is allegedly refusing, then you need an experienced family law attorney.
I’d be happy to help you or consult with you about that. So if you have any questions about this or ever need a Child Custody Attorney for Fathers in Oklahoma or a Child Support Lawyer For Men in Tulsa, please contact dads.law.
