How can court orders be breached?
Court orders can be breached in a variety of ways, and as we mentioned above these breaches can be either deliberate or unintentional. A person may actively decide against complying with the order, not make any reasonable attempts to comply with it or they may not even realise that their actions means that they are going against the court order.
In cases where someone may have unintentionally breached the court order, this may be seen as the person having a “reasonable excuse” for non-compliance and this may not attract any form of penalty or punishment. We will discuss the concept of reasonable excuses further on in this article.
A person could also breach a court order if they in some way prevented a person from complying with the court order.
There are many different ways that a court order could be breached as it is dependent on the unique circumstances of the order. An example of a court order breach is if the orders are for parenting and the parents are both able to spend time with the child as part of the order, however one parent is preventing the child from spending time with the other parent. In this example, unless there is a reasonable excuse for doing so, such as spending time with the parent will put the safety of the child at risk, then the parent could face serious consequences for breaching the order.
What are the consequences of breaching a court order?
When someone breaches a court order, there can only be consequences or penalties if the other person involved in with the order files a non-compliance contravention application. Contravention is the legal term for breach.
This application involves also filing an affidavit that details how the person has not complied with the orders, as well as documentation, such as family dispute resolution certificate, to show that you have attempted resolve the non-compliance issue.
Attempting family dispute resolution before applying to the court is mandatory, unless your circumstances are urgent, such as in cases of abuse and/or family violence.
Once a contravention application is filed, the courts will review and unless there was a reasonable excuse for the breach, the outcome could involve the non-compliant party being penalised. These penalties could include:
- Orders that require the person who has breached the order to participate in programs that could help to avoid future conflict, such as a post separation parenting program or counselling;
- Orders that compensate the other parent for lost time with the child;
- Orders for community work;
- Orders to pay the legal costs of the other person;
- Paying a fine for the breach
For a major breach or serious offence, this could also result in a jail term.