Oklahoma Divorce Laws and Marriage Counseling Requirements
Is marriage counseling required to get a divorce in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa Attorney James Wirth, that is the question that we have. Well, obviously we know that Oklahoma is very pro-marriage and a number of years ago, additional laws were passed in order to make it a little bit more difficult to get divorced. Although before that, laws were passed to make it a little bit easier.
So going back a long way, Oklahoma had four-fault divorce. You had to prove who’s at fault, that’s changed. Long while back to where we have essentially no-fault divorce, all you gotta show is reconcilable incompatibility. But more recently than that, there’s been laws that make it more difficult. There’s been waiting periods that have been put into place. You gotta wait 10 days from the date a petition is filed before you get divorced if there’s no minor children. It’s 90 days if there are minor children.
Understanding the Laws on Marriage Counseling and Divorce in Oklahoma
But as far as required for marriage counseling, that does not exist before you get divorced. You do not have to do marriage counseling before you get divorced. But what these new, relatively new laws say is that if you do do certain sorts of marriage counseling, then you can save money on the court’s filing fee. If you’re filing for divorce in Oklahoma with a minor child and one summons, which is what typically we deal with, the filing fee is $272.14.
If you show you’ve completed marriage counseling, then you can get paid less than that or maybe even waive that whole thing. We don’t usually deal with that scenario, but you can get a discount on it. But as far as whether it’s required to file, it is not. You’re not required to do marriage counseling. And with the great majority of the cases we deal with, the parties don’t do marriage counseling and do not request a reduction on that filing fee.
Schedule a Strategy Session for Your Divorce Case
If you’re dealing with this circumstance, you’re gonna wanna talk to an attorney before you file the divorce petition because there’s lots of pre-planning to do before you file related to getting certain things done ahead of the filing so as not to violate the automatic temporary injunction, so as to get a good status quo in place before you go before the court. So you wanna talk to an attorney about that. To schedule a strategy session with a lawyer at my office, you can go online to MakeLawEasy.com.
