Oregon Supplemental Rule 8.075, Mediation, and Filing for Custody

                                                                                                           May 28, 2014


I guess it is best to start off with my story before I can give information to help. I will divide my story into several readable sections that I will cover over several posts.

My son was born five years ago, and I was with the mother. Less than three months into his life, I ended up split from my son's mother. I was new to the whole being a father thing, and she helped to make me a part time father, at best, almost immediately. I was unaware of my rights and not prepared for court, among other life issues at the time and I thought maybe things would change.

During my life outside of the house, I received word that my son was potentially not being treated right by his mother and other people in the house including older siblings. I started to think about what to do, but I was still uninformed and afraid to use the legal process. I was seeing my son at his mother's descretion which was a couple of hours each week if that.  Close to the two year mark, my son's mother robbed me of seeing him for three weeks claiming excuses that I didn't believe and fearing my son's health and welfare, I ran down to the courthouse to obtain custody/visitation papers. Some of my family's advice was not to file, so I held them back until the next time his mother gave me a problem.

Shortly after getting the papers, my son was almost two years old and his mother was saying that I couldn't take him on trips out of state, and she said that he couldn't stay for a week or longer with me. When she made the threat to me about never letting him stay a week with me, I figured I would let the courts decide and filed papers.  Her reasoning was a two year old is too young to spend a week away from its mother which is totally wrong.

Anyways, I filed around my son's second birthday and immediately his mother's behavior changed. I started to get my son every weekend and he was getting to spend nights with no questions asked. To my knowledge, the court always orders mediation for custody cases, with a lawyer or not. Oregon has a standard package called Supplemental Rule 8.075 and I suggest reading up on Oregon Rule 8.075 and letting the mediator know you are informed and you would like that to be your basic starting point for negotiations, but make sure to do it during the opening of mediation. I made the request to follow Oregon Rule 8.075, but I made some changes to the package to get myself some extra time and other changes I felt were needed. The other party might not know the package, so you might have an advantage.  If the other parent argued against giving you Oregon Rule 8.075, they would need to have good reason, or they might be considered potentially difficult, and a judge would probably override them if they take it to court and they had no valid reason for being difficult. I don't want to oversimplify things because court can go several ways depending on people involved and their background and other important factors, but there is hope in the family law system for good parents trying to establish their rights if they are willing to use the system.

Either way, I see being prepared as the way to go into the mediation. Also, make sure to read the agreement before signing it.  There is nothing like sloppy or tricky wording when the mediator uses their own interpretation of your requests. My suggestion would be to provide the mediator with a written copy of how you want changes worded to fix those type miscommunication problems.  I got almost everything I wanted because the other party was just not prepared and might not have fully understood the package I was presenting.  My final warning to you is again to make sure you read the agreement well before signing.

My first dealings with the system was pretty cheap. I would say total cost for getting the first Custody/Parenting Plan was around $500 including filing fees, mediation, a parenting class and having the documents served and I think it was well worth the money. The contract gave rules for dealing with the other parent and if they failed to meet enough of the rules, I could call the authorities or file contempt papers. This was not the end of my court experience, but I will end this section before moving on to my next portion.


As  a disclaimer, I am not an attorney and not affiliated with any courts. My advice is from my own experience meant for the sole purpose of educating parents of potentially helpful information. The link I am providing is from Polk County and it is a version of their Rule 8.075, so you might be able to get an idea of what your county's Rule 8.075 would look like. 
http://courts.oregon.gov/polk/docs/parenting_time.pdf