Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everybody. We are continuing our series on nuts to bolts A to Z, alpha to omega everything that you need to know about divorce and separation with kids involved and today we are going to touch on domestic violence in family law cases and we just want to point you back if you want more in-depth conversation about this. We have a multi-episode series dealing with domestic violence, beginning with episode number 88 and ending with episode 99. So 11 episodes in that series that we got to in 2023. Today we're just going to briefly touch on how domestic violence impacts the parental separation process. Getting divorced with children are part of a paternity case. So, linda, domestic violence is just it's always heartbreaking to see for one, and it just makes things so much more complicated when you're trying to figure out how to help this family system reorganize itself.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Right and it is indeed a family system. You know, with any of the cases I've seen through the years, even at the onset of my career, as we've talked about in the many podcasts around it last year I started out with an internship at one of the betters and intervention programs and it was part of the other subset of domestic violence intervention services here in the Tulsa area and it's, you know, it's not always just, you know, one member of a family. Sometimes it's an adult and a child, or it could be just a child or just an adult, but it definitely affects everybody in the family system, including the animals, even.

Speaker 1: 1:51

Right, yeah, sometimes the animals are the ones who are either the first that the abuser gets to or the last result if there's no one else around. Yep, and sometimes both.

Speaker 2: 2:02

I guess, yeah, there's no one else around Yep, and sometimes both, I guess. Yeah, many times the children are afraid to leave an animal with that parent that was somehow abusive to some member of the family.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Yeah, and also I've seen where an abusive parent creates an abusive animal, where an animal who's been mistreated for a long time and then has a child, perhaps visiting infrequently, will react aggressively to that child being in the house, which can also be a problem.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Yes, several years ago I actually adopted a rescue that had a lot of fear, aggression around men in general, but specifically tall, thin men, because I found that it was actually an older adolescent in the family that had been abusive to younger siblings and the dog and the household.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Well, I would not have caused that dog any consternation whatsoever. I've got the tall. I guess he would have seen you as just a grown up you know, and you were okay.

Speaker 2: 3:02

I've seen you as just a grown up, you know, and you were okay. But yeah, even if it was an adult male that just happened to fit that profile, he would bless his heart. He would actually he was huge, but he would hide behind me and just get this low guttural growl and just said don't, let me close to that guy.

Speaker 1: 3:18

So yeah, that's so sad. In terms of the process, the legal process, there's a few different things that come into play in Oklahoma specifically, and I'm sure I know that there are statutes that are similar to this just all over the place, but they fall into a few different categories. One category is related to custody misstation. So there are statutes in Oklahoma that says that it is presumed that if a person has committed domestic violence then they should not have anything other than professionally supervised visitation. Now, a presumption is a roadblock, essentially that's put into place but it can be overcome. And so that presumption can be overcome in several ways. Sometimes it can be overcome by a pattern of dealing or a course of conduct. So you know, there may have been an instance of domestic violence, or maybe multiple instances, but they may have happened in the past and there may have been a track record of agreed upon visitation since that time with no apparent negative effects, and so that could be one basis to overcome the presumption. It can also be overcome by education and training and therapy. You know, if all the parties are engaged in therapy, if the perpetrator of the abuse has engaged in in-depth counseling, therapy, treatment where they've acknowledged what's occurred, they learned empathy, they've learned different tools to deal with the difficulties that they were having in controlling themselves or the things that were causing them to want to assert power and control over the people in their lives. Then they could potentially overcome the presumption there as well.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Another area in which domestic violence is addressed statutorily in Oklahoma is with attorney's fees, and there's a statute which says that if a person is committed to domestic violence and it's presumed that they should pay substantially all of the victim's attorney's fees, then it's inferred that it is the reasonable attorney's fees incurred by the victim. Now there's been some case law in 2023 in Oklahoma that really reinforced that. That's mandatory. Typically, when you're talking about attorney's fees in family law cases, they take into consideration all sorts of factors, including the relative ability of the parties to financially afford their attorney's fees, including the relative ability of the parties to financially afford their attorney's fees when it comes to domestic violence, if there's been a finding of it, then by case law, that doesn't matter. The judge shall award substantially all, even if the person who is the victim of the domestic violence makes 10 times as much as the perpetrator. And that's a recent development in 2023 where the appellate court said no, we actually mean it when we say it.

Speaker 2: 6:10

So it will be a consequence to the better.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Correct.

Speaker 2: 6:14

Interesting. I've often wondered that where the fees for my court work. I know it's a slightly different thing because you're an attorney and I'm a therapist. But you know, sometimes the reconciliation is all the estranged parent to pay, and then other times it's split according to the child support guidelines or it's split 50-50. And I'm always trying to figure out why they decided who pays what.

Speaker 1: 6:44

Yeah, so it's a variety of things. Sometimes, in order to get the therapy done faster without waiting two or three months to get to a hearing to decide if the therapy is going to go into place, the person who is seeking the reconciliation will agree to pay more than the court may make them pay otherwise, subject to reallocation by the court at the end.

Speaker 2: 7:08

It will say that in a lot of the orders yes, Right.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Just to get it started, okay, because sometimes you have a custodial parent who is intentionally dragging their fee, doesn't want the reconciliation to occur. I know that sometimes therapists have expressed a preference for both parties to pay equally because they want everybody to have skin in the game financially.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Right.

Speaker 1: 7:30

And having one person solely be in charge of the fees can create some perverse incentives for cooperation and incentives to protract the process.

Speaker 2: 7:40

Never thought about it like that. I never knew that I was supposed to have any input on who pays either but I usually wait for you guys to figure that out and tell me.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Yeah, I mean, I think the way that would work is that the parties the party who wants a reallocation to occur would ask the court to do that. In fact, in 2023, in a case that involved you before you and I started our business and podcast together you had done the reconciliation counseling work. My client had paid initially and then in 2023, we finally got the trial done and the court ordered that the mother pay all of your fees.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Oh wow, I didn't even know that.

Speaker 1: 8:24

Because it turned out that she had lied about the abuse.

Speaker 2: 8:29

Wow Interesting.

Speaker 1: 8:30

Yep. So that's one example.

Speaker 2: 8:33

That reallocation thing.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Exactly Okay, and we see those terms in parenting coordinator orders as well. Often and sometimes as a PC, I'm asked to put into my reports whether or not I think the fee should be reallocated.

Speaker 2: 8:48

Wow, I didn't know that was a thing either. Yep, I thought PC stuff was always according to a percentage, which many people have complained about through the years, because you know if the person is paying. You know 96% of it doesn't want to go and pay for most of it, yeah, and the other person is constantly coming up with issues to go to the PC about.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Yeah, there are a few things there. So by statute, if there's no agreement otherwise. In Oklahoma parenting coordinator fees are supposed to be based on the child support competition percentage guidelines or percentage incomes. Very often, again, in order to get an agreement entered, people will agree to allocate the cost differently, often 50-50. I've seen it sometimes where the cost will be absorbed initially by the person seeking assistance on that occasion, by the person seeking assistance on that occasion.

Speaker 1: 9:38

And I didn't do this this way before, but I've learned from a better PC in terms of payment, because that's always a problem, as a PC is making sure folks pay what they're supposed to when they're supposed to. So what will happen? There is, I think, a growing trend is to require payment, usually two hours in advance, before you have the meeting maybe one hour for the meeting and one hour for the report writing, and then, if one party refuses to pay their share, the meeting doesn't happen. The other party can pay the entire thing, and then the PC report will indicate that one party refused to pay. One party paid the entire thing and then recommending reallocation.

Speaker 1: 10:20

Wow, so a few different ways to handle that one, one party paid the entire thing and then recommending reallocation.

Speaker 2: 10:25

Wow, so a few different ways to handle that. One Seems like there's always a pivot required.

Speaker 1: 10:29

It's complicated, yeah, and so back to the sort of concept of domestic violence. It is always a factor, I mean, if it is present, it is the controlling factor in custody and visitation cases, and I know that there are a lot of social media accounts that are sort of dedicated to saying once an abuser, always an abuser, once an abuser out of the child's life. But and sometimes that's true, sometimes that's absolutely the case and that's absolutely the best thing for the child in some ways, I think, if the person is just never going to stop being abusive physically, emotionally, psychologically, whatever. But very often what is domestic violence is maybe poorly handling the fallout of a disintegrating relationship and not being able to express your emotions in a healthy way, and it comes in the form of time-limited domestic violence that never occurred before and probably won't occur after. But there's lots of just different scenarios, no cases the same.

Speaker 2: 11:34

Right yeah, sometimes when I'm listening to one of those stories, it reminds me of a story about a volcano, where it's like it could be dormant for so many years and then suddenly takes off again and you're just like nobody saw that coming and it really can't be like that.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Yeah, and just like a volcano, when it erupts it can burn everybody and everything all around it. So our hope for folks if there's domestic violence involved in a case, is to seek treatment early, and often it's really hard. I have multiple cases right now where I have a person who is accused of domestic violence and they're facing criminal prosecution and they're between a rock and a hard place and it becomes a choice for them of saying prosecute me, all you will, I'm going to get the help I need to be able to see my children. Sometimes it's a case of I'm not going to say a word until I'm no longer subject to criminal prosecution and just different responses. But in a perfect world, a person who actually committed domestic violence, will own up to it, will get the treatment they need through as an intensive, as a program, as they need, even if it's a year or more.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Right or more, and will learn the empathy and respect for others that they were lacking before. That caused them or contributed to them committing domestic violence. Because when you're done with that, that person's going to be happier. They're going to have better opportunity for healthy relationships in the future.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Right.

Speaker 1: 13:15

And they can repair the relationship with their child, which is the most important relationship that there is.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Right Now. So many times they don't think about the impact it's going to have on their future going forward. They're just thinking about what they want and feel like they're entitled to from what's just happened in the past.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Yeah, yeah, and as a guardian ad litem, I'm always concerned about someone who hasn't really gotten the help they need for past domestic violence and maybe got over the presumption some other way.

Speaker 2: 13:43

Right.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Because they're just going to get in a new relationship and it's going to happen again.

Speaker 2: 13:47

Right, and if, as you just said, if they're not going to say a thing, not going to admit to anything, through you know, something like reconciliation therapy with someone like me, then the child is never going to hear what they need to hear to get past it, because the child knows what they know and knows what they saw and heard or felt, and the parent is not admitting to anything and I don't know where we're supposed to go from there. You know, sometimes the best I've been able to do is allow the opportunity for the child to be supported and able to say what they need to say to the parent about what they experienced.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Which is not the goal. For it to end that way.

Speaker 2: 14:30

No, it's not, but it's got to be a two-way street if you do true reconciliation.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Yeah, do you want anything else? Okay, everybody. That is a brief conversation about domestic violence. As a reminder, if you want to hear more in depth from us, start back at episode 88 from 2023. And we have an 11 episode series on domestic violence in these cases.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Bye.