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→Contempt applications and cost awards
====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 mean or nasty to the favoured parent.