Oklahoma Custody and Visitation During Coronavirus Outbreak

Oklahoma custody and visitation during Coronavirus may be impacted but be careful. With the Family Law Courts in Tulsa and throughout Oklahoma effectively closed parents have lots of questions. Many of them involve violations of the existing orders or interpretations of them. Still others involve each parents responsibility to keep the children safe from the virus.

In any family law question the first thing is to take a second and breath. The virus has many of us in a panic. As you’d expect this panic is made worse when it involves the health and safety of our kids. Remember that with a some basic measures and cooperation between parents your children will be fine.

Quarantining Children During The Virus

This is a special covid-19 issue. Parents are concerned when one parent takes a child to a so called hot spot. Still other issues involve visitation of other family members who themselves are from a hot spot. The reality is that in this situation each case may be a little different from another. Parents are going to have to use their best judgment and best practices to keep the children safe.

At this moment in time if one parent lives in Downtown Manhattan its probably better to delay visitation until the end of the virus. In all situations if your visitation is delayed the Courts will give you make up time. On the other hand, if the Courts determines that one parent used the Covid-19 virus in a malicious effort to stop visitation they’l take visitation away from that parent.

Current Visitation Schedules

This issue involves exercising holiday visitation during spring break, or when schools began to close down. The question is does the new school schedule apply or do we use the previous schedule.To clarify this, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma issued an Emergency Order on March 23, 2020. This order provides that visitation time based on school calendars should not be affected by school closures during coronavirus pandemic. The original school schedule remains in place when determining visitation and physical custody. This means that there is NOT an extended spring break. Additionally, it allows the parents to modify any previous visitation by written agreement. However, enforcement of these written agreements is done only if the agreement is filed with the court.

Supervised Visitation and Covid-19

If you’re visitation is under a supervised visitation order you’ll need to be flexible. For supervised visitation the logistics involving availability of the supervisor will complicate the problem. While some supervisors aren’t impacted by Covid-19 others may be. They may have their own family issues that arise form the virus. Still others with professionally supervised visitation will need to abide by the schedule of the supervising agency itself. Truthfully, in situations that require supervised visitation be ready to suspend your visitation if need be. In this case the missed visitation will be made up after the virus is gone.

Tulsa Child Custody Lawyers

Oklahoma Custody and Visitation During Coronavirus is creating questions in our State. When you’ve got questions related to family law the State of Oklahoma has many different resources at your disposal. One such resource is family law attorneys that take a focused and level headed approach to your problem. Family law is a special practice area in our State that requires experienced attorneys. Call us for a free consultation at 918.743.2233