In a contempt action the Plaintiff must satisfy that it was a clear and unequivocal court order and the Defendant engaged in a clear violation of that order. The beginning part of that is if the order is uncertain there cannot be a finding of contempt. So, if it has more than one meaning or that different reasonable people could look at it differently that can be problematic. A lot of the times the Separation Agreements and Temporary Orders are written at the last of minute the day in court or it can have some language that can be unambiguous. The order also cannot contain gaps and omissions. It is the interpretation piece if there are not thought out. There can be problems in terms of being able to prove the contempt or not. It must be clear enough for the Defendant to know what actions he/she needs to take and explain the conduct of the parties and must engage in or must not engage in to satisfy a reasonable intelligent person.

In addition, the disobedience of the Defendant must be clear. So, it must be looked at if an order of ambiguous or not and if it is clear the Defendant violated the order.