Tulsa Attorney BlogCategory: Family Law

91 Articles:

• What is the Waiting Period for a Divorce with Children in Oklahoma?

  By Staff, September 21st, 2020

  How long must we wait to get divorced if there’s minor children involved in the marriage? Oklahoma does have timeframes that you must wait. If there’s no minor children, it’s only 10 days. But if there are kids involved, then it is a 90-day waiting period. And that 90 days begins when the petition is filed with the court.

• How Do I Get Full Custody of My Child in Oklahoma?

  By Staff, September 17th, 2020

  How do I get full custody? Well, you got to ask for it. You got to file for it and then you got to go to court and either get agreement, or get a judge to decide that that’s what’s in the best interest of the child, but it depends a little bit on where you start off. So if you are married, then you and your spouse ha defacto kind of have joint custody. You don’t have any legal document. You don’t have any legal determination, but neither one of you has superior rights to the other. So if you want those superior rights, you need to file with the court. And if you file the divorce action requested for custody, or if you don’t want a divorce, you can file a legal separation requesting for custody.

• Do I Have to let the Father See My Child (Oklahoma Law)?

  By Staff, September 16th, 2020

  In Oklahoma do I have to allow the father to see my child, or our child? And that answer to that depends. What are the circumstances? If there is a court order in place, then you’ve got to file that court order unless you believe doing so would put the child in eminent danger of irreparable harm, in which case you need to file an emergency to get that changed. You’ve got a duty to protect the child, but you also have a duty to follow a court order.

• How Long Do You Have to Wait to Get Remarried in Oklahoma?

  By Staff, September 15th, 2020

  Under Oklahoma law, you have to wait at least six months to remarry after your Oklahoma divorce decree is finalized. So what the law says is if you get married within that six month period, so six months has not passed yet, then there’s two issues. One, the new marriage is going to be voidable. The party could file, or you could file to have it annulled because it is a voidable marriage. Now that issue cures itself, if you continue to act as though you’re in the marriage and reside together, once that six month waiting period has passed, then that voidable marriage becomes a legit marriage after that six months.

• What Are the Alimony Laws in Oklahoma?

  By Staff, September 9th, 2020

  Tulsa Attorney James Wirth answers what are Oklahoma’s alimony laws or spousal support laws? Well, yes, spousal support, alimony, it is a thing in Oklahoma, and the law does not give a lot of rules on it. So, judges have wide discretion in determining what is appropriate. The court’s going to look at what is equitable, what is fair in determining what is appropriate for spousal support, but typical things that we look at is we’ve got one party that has much better ability to pay bills and one party that is in need, so we’re going to look at the finances of each party and determine. Obviously, we have to have a marriage first. In those scenarios, we look at the income of the party. If you’ve got one party with no income and lots of expenses and is used to a certain level of living, but doesn’t have the ability to earn what it takes to get there, that is a party that has a need for spouse support or alimony. That’s one of the requirements. The other part is we’re going to look at the other side. What is that party’s income? What is that party’s expenses? After their expenses are paid, do they have money left over? If so, then they’ve got the ability to pay. We’ve got need and then we’ve got ability to pay. Then lastly, we want to show that that need is tied to the marriage. That person that is need, are they in need, because they gave up their career to take care of the kids? Are they in need, because they gave up a career, or a job, or schooling in order to take care of the husband and to have more household duties? If so, then that need is going to tie it to the marriage.

• Can You Relinquish Custody of a Biological Child in Oklahoma?

  By Staff, September 8th, 2020

  If we’re talking about relinquishing custody, then certainly that is something that you could do. You could give the other parent custody just by signing over custody, and then maybe you could request visitation rights, or maybe you don’t even request visitation rights. And then that person would have custody, but it does not terminate your parental rights. Same thing with a third party. If the other parent is not available to step in or the other parent is unfit and you’re wanting to relinquish, then you could give up guardianship to a third party and say right now it’s in the best interest of my child for somebody else to care for that person. Get a guardianship in place, and guardianship’s are temporary by nature. So they’re indefinite and they stay in effect until they’re terminated, but you could file at any time to terminate that and get your custody back. So that deals with relinquishing or giving up custody. But most of the time when we talk about relinquishment we’re not dealing with just custody, we’re dealing with parental rights, and that’s different.

• How Much Does It Cost to Go to Court for Child Custody in Oklahoma?

  By Staff, September 3rd, 2020

  It depends on how much work goes into it because these attorneys are billing hourly, and there could be additional costs. If you have to do a deposition, you got to pay a court reporter, if you need more evidence, you need a PI, you need a private investigator helping out. If you go to mediation, which mediation in Tulsa County is required before you get a trial date, you’ve got to pay the mediator’s fee. If you need a custody evaluation, then you need to pay a custody evaluator. If you need to appraise the value of a house, then you need an appraiser to handle that for you. You might need a parenting coordinator. You might need a guardian ad litem. There’s all kinds of different costs could go into that in addition to the filing fee and the attorney fee. Depending on how litigated it is, the cost can vary as far as the total cost based on the total number of hours that the attorney puts into the case.

• Tips for Utilizing a Parenting Coordinator in Oklahoma

  By Staff, July 3rd, 2020

  Statements made to a Parenting Coordinator are not confidential. This is not an attorney client relationship that you have. So anything you tell the Parenting Coordinator, you better expect that it could be made in a report that’s published in the court file which could be open to the general public. So that’s got to be known.

• Where to Get an Order Appointing Parenting Coordinator Form for Oklahoma?

  By Staff, July 2nd, 2020

  Most people may not know that if they haven’t been in litigation, judges generally do not draft their own orders. Usually the parties are ordered to come up with the orders based on the judge’s decision. So where do you get an order appointing? For the most part, the court just doesn’t have standard forms ready to go. But in Tulsa County at the website for the Tulsa County District Court, there actually is a form available and I’ve got a copy of that. I’ll make a link to it in this article, and it is a pretty detailed order appointing a parenting coordinator. So if you want a parenting coordinator appointed, this is a good place to start and either use this form or use a lot of ideas from this form.

• Examples of Issues to Bring to a Parenting Coordinator

  By Staff, July 1st, 2020

  If you’ve got an order in place that says that the visitation exchange is supposed to occur at a particular location, but now it doesn’t make sense to do it there. And that could be either because that location is closed down and it’s no longer available for the public to use, or it could be because one of the parties has moved not far enough to be a relocation, but far enough to where the old spot is no longer a halfway point. So if you’re in that scenario, you want to talk to the other parent, see if an agreement can be reached on a new place.