Document Any Wrong Doing That Occurs From Spouse
Video Transcribed: Things are going well with your former partner, you guys can agree on how to raise your children, or child visitation, it’s not that big of a deal. Things are fine, but you see some clouds on the horizon, you’re kind of worried about maybe some of the new romantic entanglements they’re getting into, what should you be doing to protect yourself?
My name is Ryan Cannonie, I am the Tahlequah family attorney for the Wirth Law Office in Cherokee County. And one thing I talk to either potential clients about, or I’ve talked to current clients that have asked for advice. One thing that they need to be doing is documentation.
When you start, even if things are going well, still document everything because very, very few times do people have a situation where they have a child together and they don’t have the court involved, they just agree, handshake agreement to custody and visitation, and that ends up lasting the child’s entire life because at some point there’s going to be some type of issues.
Even parents who are still together and have no intention of ever divorcing, disagree on how to raise their children sometimes. So the fact that you have two people who are no longer together, it’s no wonder that people have these issues.
But, what happens when you go to court is, this isn’t the court of public opinion, this isn’t Facebook, this is a legal process. So you have to have evidence and you have to have proof. That includes journals where you documented things, it includes any recorded conversations you’ve had, anything like that occurs that you can show and prove your side of the story.
Now, a lot of times, what I see is that one person decides, Hey, I’m going to get a divorce, or I’m going to ask for child custody modifications, but I’m not going to ask them right now.
I want to wait a few months until I can get more evidence on the other person, and then when I go to an attorney, I’ll file, I’ll say all this evidence out there is out there, I have all this and the other person’s completely dumbstruck because they didn’t see this coming at all.
So regardless of how good things are if there are things that come up, if the person was charged with a public into during this, if there were times where they chose for three weeks not to have visitation, if they failed to appear for visitation, if they move out of state, if they become romantically involved with the love of their life who is a sex offender, things like that can help you in your family law case, on down the road.
And so it’s good too, even if things are well, and this isn’t going out and look for things or try to start a fight if things are going well, that’s great, that’s wonderful. We hope you never have to use the court system, but statistically, you probably will.
So if you’re going to be in this situation, you might as well be prepared. So at least keep something, a log of things like that, that you can bring when you come to talk to me as your attorney about what’s been going on.
I can start looking into that, I can start asking questions about it and start getting the proof if it’s not already there, but the proof we need for our motion to modify, proof we need to show why we need more custody, primary custodian to show why visitation’s inappropriate, why supervised visitation is appropriate, anything like that.
So give us a call, or you can go on our website, tahlequahattorney.com, send us a web form. If you’re having some questions, if you’re thinking that, “Hey, I might need an attorney sometime later, I want to just touch base with you.
See how things are, what would you charge for this?” Feel free, we will do a low-cost consultation. Even if you don’t retain us today, or even tomorrow, we put it in our computer system, and then later on from now, we can pull that back up and get started, see our notes from last time. So give us a call, shoot us a message and we’ll see if we can help you or just give you some advice.
