Contempt and enforcement help for Forest Park families.
Forest Park parents working hard, often on tight budgets, can’t afford an ex who ignores a support order. We help you enforce it through a contempt action and pursue what you’re owed.
Daniels & Taylor serves Forest Park 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 Forest Park 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 Forest Park 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 Forest Park can use contempt to enforce what the divorce ordered.
Common questions about contempt in Forest Park
Where would my Forest Park contempt case be filed?
In the Superior Court of Clayton County, in the county seat of Jonesboro.
My ex won’t pay support, what’s my first step?
We review the order and file for contempt to enforce it.
Is the first case evaluation free?
Yes, with no obligation to move forward.
Don’t let a court order be ignored. Call (770) 285-1673 for a free case evaluation.
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