Child custody orders are at most times violated by one party or the other. It may be unintentional in some cases, but in other cases one party deliberately disregards the arrangements set out in the child custody order.

Examples of violations of a child custody order might include but not limited to:

• A parent not allowing the other parent to speak to the child when they are in his or her custody;
• A parent’s refusal to return the child to the other parent at the scheduled time;
• A parent’s refusal to give the other parent information such as when one parent is taking the child out the country;
• A parent alienating the child from the other parent; and
• Any other action in contradiction to, or in violation of, the current child custody order.

If the child custody order has been, or is being, violated, you have the following legal options:

• You can get your lawyer to file an application in court to modify the current child custody order stating the reasons why the current child custody order should be modified.
•  The second option is that you can file a motion for contempt  of court. Doing so will reveal to the court that the other parent is failing to abide by the current custody order, therefore you request the violating parent be found in contempt of court. Upon hearing the application for contempt, the court would make a decision based upon the circumstances of the case.

Filing a motion for contempt  has its own consequences against the violating parent. The court may order that the parent in contempt be ordered to pay a fine in response to the violation(s), or in serious situations, the court may impose jail time for a parent shown to have been purposely and continuously violating a custody order. In other instances, the court may request that the parties attend child custody mediation rather than hold the offending parent in contempt of court. If the court prefers this option, the court would appoint a mediator and set out the guidelines of how the mediation should be conducted.