Don’t Delay, Take Charge Today
Video Transcribed: Is there a way to expedite the divorce process in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa Attorney James Wirth, and that’s the question that we have coming in.
Is there a way to expedite, to speed up the court process? Anybody that’s been involved in a court process or procedures like that knows sometimes they can take a long time. They can be delayed. Lots of times people want to speed those processes up. So is there a way to do that? Certainly, there are certain things you can do to try to move those along more quickly. For the most part, all parties to a case have some control in slowing things down. And nobody is going to automatically move the case forward unless they have the desire to do so. For the most part, the court doesn’t move the case forward.
One of the parties or one or more of the parties have to be the ones to do that by setting it for things, moving it forward, and being prepared for things, so there are not further delays. So if you’re going through a divorce, it’s going to depend on the status of your case and the best way to push it forward. But starting from the beginning, if you want to get things done quickly in Tulsa County, there are a number of things you want to do. First off, start immediately. Go ahead and set it for a scheduled conference. That’s where you can get in to get a scheduling order entered that sets deadlines for discovery, mediation, and other things. Mediation brings up a point. Tulsa County, every case in family law court must mediate before the judge that’s going to give you a trial date, which means get that scheduled early, get it done, and check that box, so it’s not a problem later.
Discovery. If you’re going to do discovery, send it out quickly, so the other side has time to respond. And if they send discovery to you, make sure you get responses together in time to get it to them by the deadline. Those are all things you can do to try to speed up the process. If things start getting bogged down and aren’t moving forward, there’s generally something that you can do to resolve that. So if nothing’s happening, you may want to be the one to set it for a temporary order hearing. If you’re not getting any responses from the other side, you may need to file a motion for a default judgment. If you’ve got an agreement, but you can’t get the parties together to draft it up, sign it, and get it entered, you may need to file a motion to settle the journal entries.
There are a lot of things that could come up that cause delays, but usually, there’s something you can do to try to mitigate that delay to some extent. Like I said before, any party to a case can cause certain delays, but you also have the ability to push things forward. Someone just has to be the one to keep on top of it and keep moving forward in order to get those things done.
So if you’re dealing with this circumstance, everything’s taking forever to get your divorce case or other family law case done, there may be things that could be done in your specific case. You’re going to want to talk to an attorney confidentially about that to get legal advice specific to your circumstances. To get that scheduled with an Oklahoma divorce lawyer at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.