Protective Order Courts Are a Matter of Law
Video Transcribed: the Tulsa Fathers Rights Attorney. I want to talk to you about ancillary proceedings. A lot of times, going through a divorce and paternity, other legal issues are relevant. And sometimes, it’s a product of the separation, such as a protective order or a name change petition, or even criminal charges that go along with it. Now, what do these things do to the paternity and the divorce case? How do they interact with your Oklahoma divorce?
There’s a number of ways they would interact. Something like a name change, you might be able to just consolidate as an issue and reserve it for the trial inside either the divorce or the paternity case. And that one might not present as much of a hiccup, except for maybe a few sentences in court trying to get it there.
A protective order, on the other hand, presents a lot of risk for people’s records. There are obviously implications in terms of your right to firearms, and so these are dangerous things out there for people to face.
Protective order courts are a matter of law, rather than as a matter of equity or in the best interest of the children, which would be the standards that you’d see used in both paternity and divorce cases. So, whether it happened or not, does it meet the statute, that is, the protective order standard?
It’s a preponderance, so the protective orders go out when nothing happens, and that’s how they’re designed. Oftentimes, that is an opportunity, if there’s a criminal case, to do discovery, which might benefit your criminal defense. It’s also a liability because you can’t take the stand or maybe shouldn’t take the stand, and that’s something you should evaluate with the attorney.
The other side of that is risking the potential for it being on your record and you losing your rights to a firearm for up to five years or more. You might consider trailing that protective order hearing so that it’s heard in the context of the paternity and divorce situation, which would have a greater scope of relevancy.
The court is able to hear a lot more things at the same time that it’s considering the protective order. Again, the criminal is the worst kind of ancillary, obviously for anybody, because your liberty is there. And so once that comes in, every other kind of case that you’re involved in has to take a backseat unless the criminal case is not really serious.
But it really needs to take precedence because you can be put in jail for statements that you’ve made in other courts if they help the prosecution in the criminal case. So collateral or ancillary proceedings will influence your case in ways that are very, very impactful. Thanks for your time.