Don’t Let Your Rights as a Parent Go Unheard
Video Transcript: The other parent isn’t allowing me to see my child. What can I do? Hi, my name is Jason Sorenson. I’m a lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma here at Wirth Law Office, and today we’re going to be talking about the different routes to recovery the parents can take if the other parent isn’t allowing them to see their child during their time with the child.
So first off, you really need to make sure you have enforceable visitation rights to the child. And if you don’t, if you don’t have a court order that specifies your visitation rights, then you may need to contact an attorney to get those. But if you do have a court order that specifies specific times in which you’re supposed to have your child, there’s really three routes to recovery that you can take.
The first one is to call law enforcement and ask for what’s called a civil standby. You’d need to have a copy of your court order present so the law enforcement officer could see the rights that you’re trying to have the officer enforce. So you’d want to bring that with you and the officer would accompany you to the other party’s house and they would try to enforce your rights.
However, this avenue doesn’t always work because most officers don’t want to get involved in civil matters. So the next option would be to have an attorney send the other parent a demand letter, which is really just a letter from an attorney that threatens a lawsuit if they don’t comply with the court order. Or if you’re already in an ongoing case, then you can just have your attorney call their attorney and have the attorney’s work it out.
And then the third and probably strongest option would be to file an enforcement action. This is your way of letting the court know that your rights are being violated and the other parent could get a citation for contempt, which could result in a $500 fine, up to six months jail time, and even them paying your attorney fees.
So there are consequences for parties that violate their duties under your court order. But if you’d like any help with any of these options or you’d just like more information from a child custody attorney in Oklahoma on these options in your case, you can contact us at makelaweasy.com and we can help you out with that.
