If You’re The Father, You Can Try To Get Custody — Joint Or Sole. Try To Plan Out A Visitation Agreement That’s Enforced By The Court.
Video Transcribed: My name is Ryan Cannonie, I am the Tahlequah criminal defense attorney for Wirth Law Office in Cherokee county. We handle all types of cases here. And one thing that comes up quite a lot actually is paternity actions. Now, when I say paternity actions, this is a situation, let’s say you’re a father, you have children, but you weren’t ever put on the birth certificate.
You have never had DNA done. You and the children’s mother were never married and just their kids were born and you’ve always kind of been in the picture. You maybe don’t live together, so they visit with you sometimes. They visit with her sometimes, and that’s kind of the situation you’re in.
So if you find yourself in a situation like most of the time when people come in, it’s not because things are going well. No one goes to the court system because things are going well.
But a lot of times what happens is over the years, there’s disagreements, there’s re-marriages, there’s other situations, maybe possibly moving. And what happens is visitation is stopped. So you are no longer allowed to see your children because their mother just won’t let you around them.
Well, when you go to try to get an order from the court to let you see your children, you’re going to run into one big problem. It’s that you’re going to have to prove you’re their father. And to do that, you’re going to want to get an attorney. So what would be filed in that situation is a paternity action.
And depending on the facts, there’s ways to look at paternity from the age of the child based on you claiming to be the father. There’s DNA, there’s presumptions based on relationship status. There’s different ways to prove that you are the father.
And once you’re the father, then you can try to get custody, joint or sole, try to plan out a visitation agreement that’s enforced by the court. It’s not just like you had before that can be ended at any time. The first step on all that is proving you are the father.
So if you find yourself in this situation, please give us a call. We can get some paperwork filed for you and hopefully start you on the way to getting to see your kids again, and maybe even getting custody of them if that’s what you want. You want to talk to a Tahlequah attorney, come on down or give us a call. We can help your Tahlequah family law case.
