What contempt means
Contempt is the failure to obey a valid court order. In custody matters it usually looks like one parent repeatedly withholding court-ordered time, refusing exchanges, or ignoring decision-making terms. A contempt finding can carry real consequences, but courts set a high bar: they generally want to see that the violation was clear and, often, willful.
Meeting that bar is a documentation problem. A single frustrating incident rarely gets there; a dated pattern often does. Each entry that captures what the order required, what actually happened, the date, and the effect on the child builds toward the specific, provable pattern a contempt motion needs.
Example: an order gives you alternate weekends. Logging four consecutive weekends where the other parent canceled at the last minute, each with the date and the message canceling, turns a vague grievance into an itemized record your attorney can act on.
Whether conduct rises to contempt, and what remedy follows, is jurisdiction-specific and a decision for the court, so treat documentation as the raw material and let your attorney judge the threshold.