When a Dunwoody court order is treated as optional.
A custody schedule or a support order means little to a Dunwoody family if the other parent treats it as just words on paper. Contempt is what turns that order back into something enforceable, with real consequences for ignoring it, and we handle the filing and the hearing for you.
Daniels & Taylor serves Dunwoody families from our office in Lawrenceville.
What most people pay for a case evaluation to learn
Contempt is how you enforce an order that already exists, not how you change it. If the other person is ignoring your custody, support, or divorce order, you ask the court to enforce it; to change the order you file a separate modification (O.C.G.A. 19-9-23(b)).
The violation has to be willful. An honest inability to pay is a defense to a support contempt; the question is whether the other person could comply and chose not to
(O.C.G.A. 19-6-28).
How a Georgia contempt case works
Contempt is how you enforce an existing order when the other person refuses to follow it. The court can compel compliance, and for a willful refusal it can order jail until the person complies, a purgeable and coercive remedy, so no one can promise that the other side will be jailed (O.C.G.A. 19-6-28).
Contempt is filed in the same court that entered the order you are enforcing, the court that issued your order, not necessarily where either of you lives now (O.C.G.A. 19-9-23(b)). If your order came from the Superior Court of Gwinnett
County, that is where your contempt case belongs; if it came from another county, that is where it belongs.
If circumstances have genuinely changed, the proper step in Georgia is generally a modification, not contempt, because contempt enforces an existing order rather than changing it (O.C.G.A. 19-9-23(b), 19-9-3), so a parent in Dunwoody whose situation has changed typically files for modification.
A contempt action in Georgia enforces an existing custody order rather than creating new terms (O.C.G.A. 19-9-23(b)), so a parent in Dunwoody uses contempt to hold the other parent to the current custody arrangement.
Contempt also enforces the terms of a Georgia divorce decree, such as support, property, and parenting obligations (O.C.G.A. 19-6-28), so a party in Dunwoody can use contempt to enforce what the divorce ordered.
Common questions about contempt in Dunwoody
Where is a contempt case filed?
A contempt action belongs in the court that entered your original order: if your order came from a particular county’s Superior Court, that is where the contempt is filed, even if you have since moved to another county. We confirm which court that is for you.
What can the court actually do to make them comply?
It can order makeup parenting time, collect the unpaid support, award fees, and in serious cases jail until the parent obeys.
What if they insist they cannot pay?
They must prove a real inability; a parent who simply chose to stop, or cut their own income to avoid it, is not excused.
Turn the order back into something that holds. Call (770) 285-1673 for a free case evaluation.
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