In Oklahoma, the Automatic Temporary Injunction (ATI) is a court order established by statute at 43 O.S. § 110. It goes into effect as soon as a divorce petition is filed by a Petitioner and the documents are served on the Respondent. It is designed to protect both parties and to an extent maintain the status quo while the divorce proceedings are underway. It only applies to divorce cases and does not apply to paternity cases filed pursuant to the Uniform Parentage Act.

Text messages and emails can be important evidence in family law cases. There are apps that can be used to export text messages and emails to PDF format. Photos, videos, and audio recordings should be printed and saved on USB flash drives for use in court.

It is important to keep a record of parenting time, including when each parent has the child and when the other parent does not exercise their parenting time. Notes about parenting time and other events should be made close to the time they happened.

There are many actions you can take that seem counterintuitive or even uncomfortable but will position you for a successful outcome in a lawsuit. You cannot take anything for granted, and you cannot make assumptions. By being proactive and by communicating, you can put the other side on their heels early and often.

Transparency and patience are important concepts when dealing with an unreasonable opposing party in a lawsuit. By being upfront about your position, evidence, and willingness to negotiate, you can signal that you're not playing games or hiding information.

By making good decisions early about who to hire as your counsel and what your desired outcome should realistically be for your type of case, you can make your money go further for your case.

A "Chess, Not Checkers" concept emphasizes strategic, long-term thinking and planning over short-term gains and reactive decision-making.

Attorneys with higher rates are more likely to have transparency and a system that lets you smartly evaluate where to best put your money. They have reports and other data that lets them give you an estimate of attorney fees to anticipate for your type of case. In some cases, a lawyer whose rate is 3x or 4x that of their competitor may actually charge a lower total fee than the lower-priced attorney. Higher-priced, experienced lawyers are often more efficient and informative than lower-rate competitors, putting you in a better decision to make big-picture decisions and move your case along to resolution.

There may be strategic reasons about whether and when to issue written discovery requests or to send notice to the opposing party to appear and testify in a deposition. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses.

Our lawyers have advanced training for written discovery and depositions, including best practices training for depositions from the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. We have a complete library about depositions in all manner of civil cases, including helpful DVDs that we share with clients to help them prepare for their depositions.