Understanding Contempt: Legal Implications and Consequences Explained
So what is contempt of court and how will it affect you? I’m Tulsa criminal attorney Carl Birkhead with Wirth Law Office in Oklahoma. I’ve been practicing law for about seven years, mainly family and criminal law. I want to make law easy and explain contempt of court and what that process looks like.
Types of Contempt of Court
There are two different kinds of contempt: direct contempt and indirect contempt. Direct contempt is if you’re in the courtroom in front of the judge and you’re directly showing contempt for the court. Disrespecting the judge, disrespecting the court staff, being on your phone a bunch, wearing profane material, standing up, and cussing people out.
Direct contempt of court means you’re going to go to jail for that. Indirect contempt of court is a little bit different and I see it a lot of times in my family cases where indirect contempt of court is basically if there’s a court order, like say there’s a court order for child support.
Indirect Contempt Explained
That one happens a lot, so we’ll use that as our example. So there’s a court order for child support. You’re ordered to pay child support and you don’t pay it. Or the other side’s ordered to and they don’t pay it. What happens is we can apply to a contempt citation, basically saying, hey court, you issued this order. They’re not following this order.
They’re showing contempt for you, contempt for this court indirectly by refusing to follow the orders that this court issued. They’re not directly giving the finger to the judge, but indirectly they are being disrespectful by refusing to abide by the court’s rulings. So typically what will happen is you’ll file your application for contempt. You’ll get it set for an arraignment because it’s a quasi-criminal thing, so you do have to be arraigned on it and there is a bond that is issued for you.
The Contempt Process
And then it kind of proceeds like any other case or charge. Usually in a family setting, if someone’s filed contempt, it’ll just run concurrently with the case. So let’s say you’re in a divorce and during the divorce, you filed a contempt application or the other side filed a contempt application.
What will happen whenever that divorce goes to trial, you will also be on trial for contempt. Sometimes it won’t. Sometimes people will decide, especially, again, in the child support setting here in Tulsa, plenty of times people will elect to have a jury trial and have six jurors come in and have the contempt tried in front of them.
Consequences of Contempt
Contempt does carry jail time. I believe that it carries either a $500 fine or six months in jail. And it gets kind of weird because sometimes you can be jailed for six months. Sometimes I’ve seen people be placed in custody with a purge amount for, let’s say you owe $10,000 in back child support. If you can somehow pay $2,500 for that, you can be released to go back out on it.
It’s kind of interesting to see how contempt plays in these different types of cases because really, it is its own separate thing, but it’s never filed on its own. It’s always in conjunction with something else, at least in my experience.
Get Help with Contempt Issues
If you’re in a situation where you’re facing contempt charges or maybe you feel like the other person in your court case is not abiding by the court’s order and you want to file contempt on them, absolutely give us a call. Don’t face these legal challenges alone. Contact Oklahoma criminal attorney Carl Birkhead today for a low-cost initial strategy session. Call 918-879-1681 to discuss your case and explore your options with a qualified legal professional.
