If Filing for Guardianship, Hiring an Attorney Could Generate Desired Results
Video Transcribed: Can you file for a guardianship in the state of Oklahoma without a lawyer? Tulsa attorney, Justin Mosteller with grandparents.attorney, And I’m going to spend a minute or two talking with you about this issue today.
By design guardianships are supposed to be a vehicle that a non-lawyer can use in an emergency situation or in a situation where a parent is unfit or unavailable to take care of a child. Now just because it’s designed to work that way doesn’t mean it works that way in reality and specifically recently there’s been a lot of changes to the law concerning guardianships.
And it’s happened pretty quickly and it’s been pretty chaotic. So as new requirements are added in for background checks, that’s created a good deal of complexity around guardianships all over the state. And I would say that it has made it much more difficult for guardians to step up and do this on their own.
And it’s been my experience that the process has become complicated enough that it really does justify hiring an attorney and that’s not a good thing. I think that guardianship dockets really should have been preserved for lay people to be able to handle it themselves.
But we’re not legislatures, we’re just the lawyers that are trying to work under the system the legislators put forward. So that in mind, you probably need to hire a lawyer. Now at each court clerk, they’re going to have forms available.
If you go up there and ask them for guardianship forms, they’ll give them to you and that should have a good checklist about everything that you’ll need.
It should have a checklist for who needs to get sent what and how service can be accomplished, what background checks need to be completed.
All of that’s going to be up there at the court clerk’s office, but if you need somebody to help walk you through it then don’t hesitate to reach out to an attorney. It’s what I would do if I were in that situation.
So if you’re in Tulsa, Oklahoma and you need help with the guardianship issue, give our office a call and we’ll be happy to walk you through it and represent you. Our office number is (918) 932-2800 thanks.