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→Contempt applications and cost awards
When someone fails to follow a court order, they are said to have "breached" the order, and breaching an order is called ''contempt of court''. One way of enforcing a court order is to make an application to court asking for an order that the other person be found "in contempt" for breaching a particular term of a particular order in a particular way. When contempt is proven, the court may make orders intended to punish the person who breached the order by issuing fines, sending them to jail, or requiring them to perform community service of some nature. (The court has lots of other choices as well.) Contempt applications are serious business.
Sometimes a contempt application, or the threat of a contempt application, is what's necessary to force someone to comply with a court order. However, where a child is estranged or alienated from a parent, a contempt application could inadvertently wind up reinforcing the child's negative views of the rejected parent by making the favoured parent look like a victim. In cases of alienation in particular, a contempt application may just feed into the idea that the rejected parent is someone being unfair, mean or nasty to the favoured parent.
"Costs awards" are orders that one party have their ''costs'' of an application or a court proceeding. ''Costs'' doesn't mean that one party has to pay the bill of the other party's lawyer, but they will have to pay for the lawyer's out-of-pocket expenses for things like filing fees and photocopying, and an additional amount that usually works out to maybe 35 to 40 percent of the lawyer's bill. ("Special costs" require a much larger payment, and "solicitor-client" or "lawyer-client" costs require the payment of an amount equal to the lawyer's bill.) Costs awards aren't often made in family law cases because of their financial impact on the party who has to pay them.