When your ex won’t follow the divorce decree, your remedy is to go back to the court that issued it and file a motion asking a judge to enforce the order. A divorce decree is a binding court order, and willfully ignoring it exposes your ex to back payments, wage garnishment, attorney’s fee awards, and, in serious cases, jail for contempt. The specific path depends on what obligation is being broken and how long it has been going on, but the starting point is almost always the same courthouse where your divorce was finalized.
Don’t Retaliate, Even if It Feels Justified
Before anything else: courts treat each obligation in a decree as independent. If your ex stops paying child support, you cannot cut off their parenting time. If your ex withholds visitation, you cannot stop paying support. Doing either puts you in contempt alongside your ex and hands them a defense. The only correct response is to take it back to the judge.
What to Do Before Filing Anything
Pull out the decree and read the exact language of the provision you believe is being broken. Judges respond to specifics. Vague complaints that your ex is being difficult will not get traction; a quoted provision paired with a concrete failure will.
Then put your demand in writing. An email or text identifying the violation and asking your ex to comply does two things at once: it creates a paper trail showing you tried to resolve it short of court, and it kills any later claim that your ex didn’t realize they were out of compliance.
Start a file. For unpaid support, save bank statements, payment records, or screenshots from your state’s child support portal. For custody violations, keep a dated log of every missed, late, or shortened exchange, with the texts and emails attached. For unpaid joint debts, pull your credit report and keep every collection notice. This record is what your motion will stand on.
Filing the Enforcement Motion
You file in the same court that issued your divorce. Depending on your jurisdiction, the filing is called a Motion for Contempt, a Motion for Enforcement, or an Order to Show Cause. The function is identical: you are asking a judge to find that your ex violated a clear court order and to impose consequences.
Your motion has to establish three things:
- A specific court order exists.
- Your ex knew about it.
- Your ex willfully failed to follow it.
That last element is why documentation matters. Courts distinguish between someone who refuses to comply and someone who genuinely cannot, and the willfulness piece is where contempt cases are won or lost.
Include the full names of both parties, the case number, the date the decree was entered, and a detailed description of each violation. For every instance, identify the provision of the decree, when the violation occurred, and how your ex’s conduct fell short. State what you want the court to order: back payments, make-up parenting time, attorney’s fees, a contempt finding, or some combination.
Service and the Hearing
Filing fees vary by jurisdiction. After filing, your ex has to be formally notified through service of process, meaning a copy of the motion and the hearing notice is physically delivered, usually by a sheriff’s deputy or a private process server. Service typically runs somewhere in the range of $45 to $150.
At the hearing, you present your evidence and your ex gets a chance to respond. If your ex claims inability rather than refusal, the burden generally shifts to them to prove it. A documented job loss or medical emergency may qualify. Choosing to spend the money on something else will not.
What a Judge Can Actually Order
Money
When a judge finds willful non-compliance with a financial obligation, the court can order the full arrears paid in a lump sum. For ongoing support, the court can issue a wage garnishment order to your ex’s employer. Federal law allows much higher garnishment for support than for ordinary debts: up to 50 percent of disposable earnings if your ex is supporting another spouse or child, and up to 60 percent if not, with an additional 5 percent available when payments are more than 12 weeks overdue, compared with the 25 percent cap for ordinary creditors.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1673 – Restriction on Garnishment
In most jurisdictions, the judge will also order your ex to pay the attorney’s fees and court costs you ran up bringing the motion. The reasoning is that you should not have to pay a lawyer because the other side refused to follow a court order.
Custody and Property
For custody violations, courts can order make-up parenting time and modify the exchange procedures, such as requiring exchanges at a public location or through a third party. For personal property your ex has refused to hand over, the court can issue a direct order compelling transfer, sometimes appointing a neutral party to carry it out at your ex’s expense.
When your ex refuses to sign a deed transferring real estate as the decree requires, a court can appoint an official called an elisor to sign on your ex’s behalf. The elisor’s notarized signature carries the same legal weight your ex’s would have, and your ex’s cooperation becomes unnecessary.
Contempt
For repeated or flagrant violations, a judge can hold your ex in civil contempt, which carries fines and the possibility of jail. The jail piece is coercive rather than punitive: the idea is that your ex “holds the keys to the jail” and can secure release by complying. Maximum incarceration varies by state but is typically measured in months. Actual jail is relatively rare; the threat alone resolves many enforcement disputes.
Child Support Has Federal Backup
Child support enforcement has tools other decree obligations don’t. When arrears exceed $2,500, the federal government can deny or revoke your ex’s passport.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 652 – Duties of Secretary The federal tax refund offset program can intercept your ex’s federal tax refunds and apply them to past-due support, and other federal payments can be intercepted through an administrative offset process.3Administration for Children and Families. Federal Tax Refund Offset, Administrative Offset, and Passport Denial
You generally don’t invoke these yourself. Your state’s child support enforcement agency can trigger them once you report the arrears. If you aren’t already working with that agency, contacting them should be one of your first calls when child support stops.
If the Decree Awarded You Part of a Retirement Account
If the decree gave you a share of your ex’s retirement plan but the money never moved, you likely need a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or QDRO. Under federal law, an employer-sponsored plan covered by ERISA cannot pay anyone other than the plan participant without a valid QDRO. The decree alone, however clearly it spells out the division, is not enough.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 1056 – Form and Payment of Benefits
A QDRO is a separate court order submitted to the plan administrator for approval. The administrator, not the judge, decides whether the order qualifies under the plan’s rules.5U.S. Department of Labor. Qualified Domestic Relations Orders Under ERISA Rejection is common and usually technical: wrong plan name, wrong plan type, payment dates that conflict with the plan, or vague division language. If yours is rejected, you revise and resubmit. Many family lawyers partner with QDRO specialists for exactly this reason. Delay makes it worse, especially when the account’s value is moving with the market.
When Your Ex Stops Paying a Joint Debt
This is the frustrating one. Even if the decree assigns a joint credit card or mortgage to your ex, the creditor isn’t a party to your divorce. Their contract is with both of you, and a court order between you and your ex doesn’t change that. If your ex stops paying, the creditor can still pursue you for the full balance and report the delinquency on your credit. The decree doesn’t give you grounds to dispute the debt with credit bureaus, either, because under the original agreement the debt really is yours.
What the decree does give you is leverage against your ex. You go back to court, enforce the provision assigning the debt, seek reimbursement for anything you had to pay, and ask the judge to hold your ex in contempt. Some decrees include an indemnification clause that specifically entitles you to attorney’s fees for enforcing debt-related provisions. Where you can, the better protection is upstream: push to have joint debts paid off or refinanced into individual accounts during the divorce itself, not after.
Enforcement or Modification?
Not every failure to comply is a contempt case. If your ex lost a job, developed a serious medical condition, or had another genuine change in circumstances, the right tool may be a modification rather than an enforcement motion. A modification changes the decree going forward based on new facts. Enforcement compels compliance with the decree as it stands.
A judge will not hold someone in contempt for failing to do something that was genuinely impossible, and your ex bears the burden of proving that impossibility. Earning less or having new expenses, by itself, usually isn’t enough. And a modification granted later does not erase arrears that already accrued. What built up while your ex could have asked for a modification but didn’t is still collectible.
Don’t Wait Too Long
Enforcement actions are subject to time limits that vary significantly by state, from a few years to two decades depending on the type of obligation. Child support arrears generally have longer enforcement windows than property division claims, and some states treat each missed payment as a separate violation with its own deadline. Waiting too long can mean losing the right to collect at all. If your ex has been out of compliance for an extended stretch, talk to a family law attorney in your state soon to find out which clocks are running.