When may the family court order a person to carry out a duty arising from a family judgment, adjudication or mediation record?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
For this exercise, the papers to read are the judgment, adjudication, mediation record, ruling substituting mediation, or child support burden record from which the duty is said to arise, since the provision reaches only duties found in one of those instruments. The file should also hold the party's application asking for a performance order and any record of whether the duty was performed, or of the reasons given for not performing it.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the provision's conditions together: where a person duty-bound under a judgment, adjudication, mediation record, ruling substituting mediation, or child support burden record fails without justifiable reason to perform a duty that is a financial obligation, the delivery of a young child, or the granting of access to a child, the family court may, on a party's application, order that duty performed within a period it sets.
Another reading marks the outer edge: the provision names three categories of duty and no others, so a duty that fits none of them is not reached by this order, and the provision leaves open what counts as a justifiable reason and who must show that the reason is lacking.
Your judgment
If the person says a reason prevented performance, what in the file would show whether that reason was justifiable, and on whose side of the application that showing sits?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to add or remove categories of duty, or to state who must show the absence of a justifiable reason, or if a court decision sets out when such a reason is accepted.