What is Contempt in a Virginia Divorce, Support or Custody Case?

When a court orders a person to do something, or to not do something, they are required by law to comply with that order. If they violate the order by doing the thing they were forbidden to do, or by failing to do what they were ordered to do, they have violated the order and can be held in contempt.

There are two kinds of contempt in Virginia.

The first is what I call “coercive contempt” because the person is held in custody until they do what they were ordered to do. In law school they tell you that the person “has the keys to the jail in their pocket.” All they have to do is comply with the order and they can be released.

The best example of this would be if the person had been ordered to sign a deed and refuses to sign. The court can hold them  in jail until they sign.  Once the signature is on the deed, the person must be released. The lawyer’s term for this is “civil contempt” but even many lawyers find the terminology confusing so I prefer to call it “coercive” because the purpose is to coerce the person to do something.

The second is what I call “punitive contempt.” This comes up when the violation cannot be cured.

An example of this would be when the father is to have the children at Easter and the mother refuses to send them for their visit. Once Easter has come and gone, the violation has been committed. The lawyers term for this is “criminal contempt.” The only thing the court can do is punish the person for having violated the order.

This commonly occurs with visitation violations and violations of protective orders where the party (usually the husband) has some contact with the family that is forbidden by the protective order. Most cases of criminal contempt in Virginia do not result in the person spending any time in jail. Far more common is a suspended jail sentence in which the person is sentenced to some period of time, often 30 days, and told that if they violate the order again they will have to do the time.