Yes, if Both Parties Agree
Video Transcribed: Can parents deviate from the physical custody schedule? I’m Oklahoma attorney, James Wirth, and that’s the question that we have.
Once an order is in place, what if the parties want to deviate from that, do something different, change the visitation up a bit, change that schedule up a bit, can they do that?
Obviously, any change that you do is technically a violation of the court order. So there could be arguments that it’s contempt of court; however, who is going to enforce it?
If both parties are in agreement, they’re not going to enforce it, and generally, courts do not go looking for violations of their order to enforce it on their own.
So practically speaking, the parties generally can decide jointly to deviate from the schedule to maybe switch off some weekends, whatever the case may make sense when acting in the best interest of the children.
Courts generally are fairly approving of that so long as both parties are in agreement and they’re both acting in the best interest of the children.
At the point that one of the parties stops being in agreement, well, then you got to go back to the court order.
But if you continue being in agreement to deviate for a longer period of time, it probably makes sense to file to modify. You can file an agreed motion, an order modifying the visitation schedule to change it going forward.
But as far as the general question, “Can you deviate?” Legally speaking, it’s a technical violation of the court order; but practically speaking, it is common and generally not a problem so long as both parties are in agreement. If you can document it, it’s even better.
If it continues to do that same deviation, in the best-case scenario, get back into court and modify it so that you are in line with what the court order that’s in the file has.
If you have any questions about any Oklahoma legal matters or Oklahoma family law, you’re going to want to talk to an attorney about that privately, confidentially, to get legal advice. To get that scheduled with somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
