A Georgia statute permits awards of legal fees to a party in divorce or alimony cases, or in actions for contempt of divorce or alimony judgments. Yet, while the statutory language imposes no different requirements for a fee award in a contempt proceeding than in an original divorce/alimony case, in...
Actions seeking redress for a former spouse’s alleged violation of a divorce decree seem commonplace. Yet, while a court ordinarily possesses wide discretion to determine whether a party is in contempt of its decree, the process the court must undertake to determine the meaning of its judgment diffe...
When a person willfully disobeys a prior court order, including a child custody order, a court can hold the offender in contempt.(1) The finding of contempt can be either “civil” or “criminal,” depending on the action taken by the court to deal with the contempt. Criminal contempt “imposes unconditi...
Practitioners in the area of family law frequently represent ex-spouses and parents in proceedings claiming contempt of a prior divorce decree or child custody order. Typically, those proceedings commence with the filing of a “petition” in an action assigned its own new case number. The petitioner’s...
In two prior articles, we addressed which provisions of a divorce decree could be modified after its entry and also covered a court’s ability to clarify a divorce decree in a contempt proceeding. This article delves into a court’s contempt powers with respect to a specific component of a divorce...