An Overview of Oklahoma’s Parental Visitation Advisory Guidelines
What are Oklahoma’s general guidelines related to parental visitation? I’m Tulsa attorney James Wirth. That’s a question that we have. I’m doing a series of videos related to the advisory guidelines and visitation schedules based on the report that came out from the Administrative Director of Courts as requested by the legislature back in 2004.
So as part of that, they’ve got different visitation schedules that fit different circumstances based on the age of the child. Sometimes they got to, you know if there’s a long distance between the two parents, then there’s a special schedule for that. But this video is about the general recommendation regarding parental visitation as it appears in those advisory guidelines. So let’s see what that provides.
Minimum Amount of Time
First off, generally you want to have a specified minimum amount of time for the non-custodial parent or the secondary custodial parent. Some people call it standard visitation of every other weekend or extended plus, but that’s generally considered to be minimum visitation if you put in that schedule. So this is the minimum, but you can allow more visitation beyond that.
What this indicates here is that there’s a preference for having a specified minimum amount as opposed to having a maximum amount or exact set amount. Additionally, it notes that as far as what’s best for kids, stable and meaningful involvement of both parents is generally best. Of course, absent, you know, there being issues where one parent is a danger to the child, of course.
Parental Obligations
Divorced, separated parents have inherent obligation towards their children, including avoiding open conflict, particularly in the presence of the kids, maintaining positive existing relationships, both with the children and the other parent, communicating and cooperating with each other to arrange the children’s activities, maintaining and sharing full and complete access to medical records, school records, maintaining direct contact with personnel working or caring for their children.
Maintaining consistent rules from one house to the next. This is one that is, it’s good in theory. In practice, it’s very rare. Each party usually has kind of their own rules in their household. Based on the general custody rules in the state of Oklahoma, each parent is usually allowed to have their own rules, but the advisory guidelines do recommend that the parties have consistent rules and they coordinate on that to create a sense of security for the kids.
Call to Action: Low-Cost Initial Strategy Session
If you’re dealing with a case in Tulsa County or in any county in the state of Oklahoma, where you’ve got visitation and custody issues, you’re probably gonna not just watch videos online, but you’re also gonna want to talk to a Tulsa child custody lawyer privately and confidentially. To get that scheduled with a Tulsa lawyer at Wirth Law Office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com or call 918-879-1681 for a low-cost initial strategy session.