Signature Service Parenting Plan/Child Custody Agreement Made Easy

Countersignature child custody agreement template

hi guys this attorney Terry s Haran your divorce and family law attorney here in the state of Georgia and today I want to talk to you about contempt actions I get a lot of questions asking what do I do if I have a parenting plan and the other person is not following the parenting plan a lot of times what's happening is maybe you've been given parenting time on the first third and fifth weekend and maybe the other side is not allowing you your parenting time or maybe they're unilaterally withholding your parenting time from you on certain weekends well here's what we do so we can actually file a contempt action because if you have an order a parenting time that assigned by Judge here in the state of Georgia then what we can do is we can actually file with the court letting the judge know that the other person has not followed the parenting plan this is very important that you actually have an order in place now if you don't have an order in place then that person is not in contempt and if your parenting plan doesn't say that you get the first third and fifth of whatever weekends you're trying to say that that person hasn't allowed you visitation then that person is not in contempt with the contempt action very specifically you are able to go to your parenting plan and say here at Mohicans and here's the time that the person has not allowed me to see the children and they need to be the same weekends now if for whatever reason your work schedule has changed and now you need to do the second and fourth weekends well that person is not in violation if your weekends are the first third and fifth weekends if your schedule has changed and you need to go back to court and modify your parenting plan so let's get back to the contempt action what is it that we can do when it comes to a contempt action what can we ask the judge for well first of all we can ask the judge to hold the person in contempt and willful content saying that this person has I complied with the court's order secondly what we can do is we can ask for make up time so if you've missed three weekends or maybe you missed a spring break then you can ask for that spring break back well it may not be that exact spring break but we'll take that number of days and we can apply it somewhere else where maybe you only got four weeks in the summer so maybe we can put that one week on the back of your summer parenting plan okay and then also what else can we ask for well we definitely can act for a reimbursement of attorneys fees I mean you would have to file a contempt action with the court and hire an attorney to do that had this person not been in contempt so we can definitely ask the judge to assess attorneys fees so that you can be reimbursed and that is discretionary so sometimes you'll find the judge that will give you all of your attorney's fees back sometimes the judge will give you a portion of your attorneys fees back now is there a chance that the judge will say no to attorneys fees there is a chance attorneys fees is discretionary but more than likely if this person is found in contempt you will get reimbursed attorneys fees what else can be done well the judge can actually modify the parenting plan in the contempt action you heard right the judge can modify the parenting plan and a contempt action so keep that in mind now what are some things that are going to help you as far as evidence is concerned well text messages if your showing up to the exchange location and you're there well the first thing you may want to do is say hey I'm here it's 6 p.m. or whatever time your parenting plan begins you may want to say hey it's 6 p.m. where are you the other thing you may want to do is to prove that you were at the exchange location at the time that you're supposed to be there you may want to take a picture of the surroundings number 3 if you're near a convenience store you may want to walk in purchase a piece of gum as proof that you in the area okay because you don't want that other person to come in and say listen I showed up to the exchange location and he or she is lying they weren't there so I'm not in contempt no you want to be able to prove to the judge that you indeed or at the exchange location now listen to me very carefully you have to be following the order of the court for this person to be held in contempt so if you're supposed to meet at the chick-fil-a on Friday at 6:00 p.m. and you go to the McDonald's or you're asking the person to bring the children to the McDonald's then guess what they're not in contempt if they don't show up to the McDonald's they're only in contempt if they don't show up to the exact location exchange location that's in your parenting plan now I get it some of you get some of you guys actually have in your parenting plan where we will mutually agree now let me just be honest with you I don't like seeing that because if you guys were really able to agree on things then you may not be in court to begin with so you always even in your parenting plan you almost always want to have an exact location and if you guys mutually agree to change it outside of that court order that's fine no when you guys don't agree you need to go back to the court order and if it says chick-fil-a at 6:00 p.m. you meet up the chicks chick-fil-a at 6:00 p.m. all right so what I want you to do is if you're dealing with contempt actions so you know someone who's dealing with a contempt action call our office set up an appointment to get started so that we can file a motion for contempt for zero four four one eight seven seven seven seven and I also want you to share this video listen I'm all about fostering the parent-child relationship so I don't like it when parents are withholding children from the other person so definitely give us a call so that we can go and we can fight so you can have the parenting time that you've been awarded thank you so much have a great day