Austin Enforcement Lawyer: Family Law Order Enforcement in Texas
An order the other side ignores is just paper. An Austin enforcement lawyer can fix that, and Texas gives you real tools to do it, but the most powerful of them expires.
If your child is already 18, you may have less than two years left to ask for contempt. Under Family Code Section 157.005(a), a court keeps the power to hold someone in contempt for unpaid child support only if the motion is filed within two years of the child becoming an adult or the support obligation ending. A separate ten-year window under Section 157.005(b) covers money judgments. Miss the two-year window and the money claim may survive, but the leverage that actually makes people pay is gone.
SMB Law, PC is an Austin family law order enforcement law firm. Attorney Shane M. Boasberg brings more than 20 years of Texas family law experience to enforcement cases across Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties, on both sides: bringing motions and defending against them.
What Our Clients Say
Key Takeaways
- Enforcing family law court orders is crucial for maintaining legal integrity and can involve matters such as child support, visitation rights, and property division.
- Non-compliance with court orders can lead to severe legal consequences, including contempt of court, financial penalties, and imprisonment.
- Hiring an experienced Austin enforcement lawyer is vital for navigating the legal landscape, identifying violations, and ensuring compliance with court orders.
How Family Law Order Enforcement Works in Texas
Enforcement in Austin starts with a motion for enforcement, and Texas is unusually strict about what that motion has to say. This is the part an experienced enforcement lawyer earns their fee on.
Section 157.002 requires the motion to identify the exact provision of the order allegedly violated, state the manner of noncompliance, and state the relief requested. For child support it goes further: the motion must set out the amount ordered, the amount paid, and the amount of arrearages, and if you are asking for contempt, it must list each date of violation with the amount due and the amount paid for that date. For possession and access, Section 157.002(c) requires the date, place, and time of each missed exchange.
This is not paperwork for its own sake. A contempt order built on a motion that failed to give that notice can be void, which means a parent who violated the order for two years walks away because the motion was drafted loosely.
Which Court Orders Can Be Enforced
Most Texas family law orders are enforceable, but the remedy an Austin enforcement lawyer can reach for depends on what kind of obligation it is.
Child support can be enforced by contempt, including jail, plus a confirmed money judgment, interest, license suspension, liens, and withholding.
Possession and access, what most parents call visitation, can be enforced by contempt and, since a 2025 change to the Family Code, by mandatory make-up time. Where the denials keep happening, that can also support modifying the order.
Spousal maintenance ordered under Chapter 8 can be enforced by contempt. A contractual alimony obligation the parties agreed to, over and above what the statute requires, generally cannot: the Texas Supreme Court held in Dalton v. Dalton that a voluntary agreement to support a former spouse beyond the legal duty is a contractual debt, and debts are not enforceable by jail.
Property division is the most limited of the four, for a constitutional reason covered below.
One point that saves people time: under Section 157.002(d), you do not have to plead that the order is enforceable by contempt in order to get other remedies. Even if contempt is off the table, a money judgment, a bond, withholding, and attorney fees may all still be available.
Contempt, Jail, and What a Texas Court Can Actually Do
Here is what a court can actually do, because the usual summary is wrong in both directions.
Criminal contempt punishes a past violation. Under Government Code Section 21.002, the maximum is a 500 dollar fine and up to six months in county jail. Because each missed payment is a separate violation, those periods can be stacked, and a punishment aggregating more than six months generally triggers the right to a jury trial.
Civil contempt is different and often more effective. It is coercive, not punitive: the person stays in jail until they comply. Section 157.166(c) requires the order to state the specific conditions for release, the purge. A civil contempt order with no stated purge condition is defective.
The detail almost every page misses. The Legislature capped contempt confinement at 18 months in Government Code Section 21.002(h), and then in Section 21.002(f) expressly exempted child support contempt from that cap. So the ceiling most articles quote does not apply to the one situation this page is about.
Beyond jail, unpaid support can suspend a driver's or professional license, intercept a tax refund, place a lien, and block a passport.
Why the Attorney General Is Not Your Lawyer
Many Austin parents open a case with the Texas Attorney General's Child Support Division and assume they now have a lawyer. They do not, and the statute says so outright.
Family Code Section 231.109(d) provides that an attorney providing Title IV-D services represents the interest of the state and not the interest of any other party, that providing those services does not create an attorney-client relationship, and that the agency must tell applicants this when they apply.
That matters in three practical ways. The Attorney General's office does not enforce possession and access at all, so a parent being denied time with a child gets no help there. It does not pursue attorney fees payable to you. And it owes you no duty of loyalty, so it will not shape strategy around your goals.
The office is genuinely useful for collection and its tools are real. It is simply not your lawyer. From our office at 1204 San Antonio Street in downtown Austin, two blocks from the Travis County courthouse, our Austin family law order enforcement attorneys handle these matters across Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties.
The Deadlines That Decide Your Case
This is the correction that matters most on this page. Two remedies, two different clocks, and they are commonly reported as one.
Contempt: two years. Under Section 157.005(a), the court keeps jurisdiction to hold an obligor in contempt only if the motion is filed no later than the second anniversary of the date the child becomes an adult or the support obligation terminates.
Arrearages and a money judgment: ten years. Under Section 157.005(b), the court can confirm the total arrearage and render a cumulative money judgment if the motion is filed within ten years of that same date.
You will read online that back support can be pursued for ten years and there is no hurry. That is only half true, and the missing half is the half with teeth. Contempt is the remedy that moves a parent who simply will not pay. A money judgment ten years later still has to be collected. If your child has recently turned 18, the two-year clock is the one to worry about.
Filing a Motion for Enforcement
There is no waiting period before filing. You may file a motion for enforcement as soon as the order is violated. The frequently repeated claim that you must wait 30 days after the decree is a misreading of a different rule: Section 9.007(c) restricts the court from rendering a clarifying or implementation order until 30 days after the final judgment is signed. It says nothing about when you may file.
Once filed, the case can end in several places. The court can hold the respondent in contempt, confirm arrearages and render a cumulative money judgment, order income withholding, require a bond, and award attorney fees. Under Section 157.162(b), a finding that the respondent is not in contempt does not stop the court from granting any of those other remedies.
Payment records help. Section 157.162(c) makes a support payment record attached to the motion admissible to prove dates paid, amounts, accrued interest, and the running arrearage, subject to the respondent's right to controvert it.
Service, Appearance, and Failure to Show Up
The respondent must be personally served with the motion and notice of hearing, and under Section 157.062(c) that service has to happen at least 10 days before the hearing.
If a respondent who was personally served simply does not show up, Section 157.066 sets an important limit: the court may not hold them in contempt for failing to appear. It can, on proper proof, grant a default judgment for the relief sought and issue a capias for their arrest. Under Section 157.101, the court must also set a bond, and an appearance bond of 1,000 dollars or a cash bond of 250 dollars is presumed reasonable unless there is evidence of evading service, prior contempt, or arrearages over 1,000 dollars.
Austin Child Support Enforcement
Child support is where an Austin enforcement lawyer has the sharpest teeth, because Texas does not treat support as an ordinary debt. Getting paid usually turns on three things: filing before the contempt window closes, pleading each missed payment with the specificity Section 157.002(b) requires, and choosing the remedy that fits the person on the other side.
Confirming Arrearages and the Six Percent Interest
Past-due support does not quietly vanish, and it grows.
Interest runs at six percent simple per year under Section 157.265, on the delinquent portion, from the date each payment is late until it is paid or the arrearage is confirmed and reduced to judgment. Simple, not compound, and it is not discretionary.
When the court confirms the arrearage it renders a cumulative money judgment, and under Section 157.263(b-3) it may not reduce or modify the amount. It can allow a counterclaim or offset, but it cannot forgive arrears that have already accrued.
The Attorney General's Child Support Division can also pursue back support with tools a private party does not have. Those tools are worth using. They are not a reason to let the two-year contempt window close.
Income Withholding Orders
Income withholding is the most reliable collection method there is, because it takes the obligor's decision out of the process. The order goes to the employer and the support comes out of the paycheck before it reaches the obligor.
It is not limited to current support. Withholding can also be used to collect an arrearage, and where an obligor is self-employed or works for an employer beyond the court's reach, Section 157.109 lets the court require a bond or security for compliance instead. Texas law allows courts to issue these orders as part of an enforcement judgment.
Defending Against an Enforcement Action
Enforcement has two sides, and a parent served with a motion for enforcement in Austin has real defenses. Our enforcement lawyers represent respondents as often as movants.
Inability to pay is an affirmative defense, and it is all or nothing. Under Section 157.008(c), the obligor must plead and prove all four elements: that he lacked the ability to provide support in the amount ordered, lacked property that could be sold or pledged to raise it, unsuccessfully attempted to borrow it, and knew of no source from which it could have been borrowed or legally obtained. Proving only that money was tight fails. This defense also goes to contempt only, not to the arrearage itself.
Voluntary relinquishment. Under Section 157.008(a) and (b), if the other parent voluntarily gave you actual possession of the child for longer than your ordered periods and you actually supported the child during that time, that is a defense in whole or in part, and you may seek an offset for the support you provided.
You may have a right to a court-appointed attorney. Under Section 157.163, the court must first decide whether incarceration is a possible result. If it is, the court has to inform an unrepresented respondent of the right to counsel and must appoint an attorney if the respondent is indigent, with time to prepare before the hearing.
Enforcing Spousal Maintenance
Spousal maintenance ordered under Chapter 8 of the Family Code is enforceable by contempt, the same as child support, because it is a duty imposed by statute rather than a debt.
Contractual alimony is different. Where spouses agreed to payments beyond what the statute would have required, the Texas Supreme Court held in Dalton v. Dalton that the excess is a contractual debt and cannot be enforced by contempt. It remains collectible as a judgment. Which category your order falls in is worth confirming before anyone threatens jail.
Income Withholding for Spousal Maintenance
Income withholding orders take spousal maintenance straight out of the obligor’s earnings, which keeps payments on time and consistent. They can cover arrears too, giving you a reliable way to enforce the order.
Strategies like that uphold the court’s order and keep everyone compliant.
Enforcing Possession and Access, and What Changed in 2025
Texas law on denied visitation changed on September 1, 2025, and most pages have not caught up. Texas calls it possession and access rather than visitation, but it is the same thing: the time your order says you get with your child.
Section 157.168 used to say a court may order additional periods of possession to make up for time that was denied. House Bill 3181 changed may to shall. A court now must order make-up time unless the denying parent shows good cause why it should not. The make-up periods must be the same type and duration as what was denied, may include weekends, holidays, and summer, and must occur within two years of the finding. The parent who was denied gets to choose when the make-up time happens.
The same bill added a repeat-offender provision. Under Section 157.168(d), where the denying parent has already been found in contempt at least three times, the make-up time must total twice the duration of what was denied.
And the new Section 156.107 may be the most useful of all: three prior contempt findings for denying possession now constitute a material and substantial change of circumstances sufficient to justify modifying the conservatorship or possession order. Repeated denial has become its own ground to change custody.
To use any of this, Section 157.002(c) requires the motion to state the date, place, and time of every occasion you were denied. Keep a contemporaneous log.
Property Division Enforcement and the Debt Problem
Property division is where enforcement runs into the Texas Constitution. Article I, Section 18 says plainly: No person shall ever be imprisoned for debt.
That is why the remedies split. Child support is not a debt; it is a legal duty arising out of the parent-child relationship, so jail is available. A divorce decree ordering one spouse to pay the other a sum of money out of future earnings is a debt, and Section 9.012(b) forbids enforcing it by contempt.
The exception is the part worth knowing. Section 9.012(a) and (b)(1) allow contempt where the order requires delivery of specific property or a sum of money already in existence when the decree was rendered. In Ex parte Gorena, the Texas Supreme Court upheld contempt on exactly that basis: the husband was not being made to pay a debt, he was being made to hand over property that already belonged to his former wife under the decree.
So how the decree was drafted decides whether jail is on the table. A money award payable from future income is collectible by liens, garnishment, and execution, but not by contempt.
The Two-Year Deadline on Property Division
Section 9.003 sets the deadline, and it is short. A suit to enforce the division of tangible personal property that existed at the time of the decree must be filed before the second anniversary of the date the decree was signed or became final on appeal, whichever is later, or the suit is barred. Future property not yet in existence carries the same two-year period, running from when the right matures or the decree becomes final, whichever is later.
Note what the section does not cover: it does not impose that two-year bar on enforcing a division of real property. If your decree involves a house or land, the timing analysis is different and worth asking about specifically.
And again: nothing requires you to wait 30 days before filing.
When an Order Is Too Vague to Enforce
Sometimes the problem is not refusal, it is that the order is too loose to enforce.
Texas sets a high bar. In Ex parte Slavin, the Texas Supreme Court held that to hold a person in contempt, the decree must spell out the details of compliance in clear, specific and unambiguous terms so the person readily knows exactly what is required. The order also has to actually command the act. In In re Coppock, the court held that incorporating an agreement into the recitals of a decree, without a mandate from the court, is not enough to support confinement.
The fix is a clarifying order. Under Section 9.008, on a finding that the original division is not specific enough to be enforceable by contempt, the court may render an order setting out specific terms, and it must give a reasonable time to comply before enforcing that order by contempt. A clarifying order cannot change the substantive division and has no retroactive effect.
Mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolution
Mediation and other alternative dispute resolution give you a way to settle an enforcement issue without going to court. These approaches open up communication and let families resolve disputes together.
Trying them can lead to an outcome both sides can live with, which makes them a real part of successful enforcement.
Benefits of Mediation
In mediation, a neutral third party guides the conversation so both parties can reach an agreement they can accept. It encourages collaboration and communication, which often leads to more satisfying results.
Mediation is a calmer, more collaborative way to resolve a dispute, and it tends to work out well for everyone.
Choosing the Right Mediator
Picking the right mediator is a big part of resolving an enforcement dispute effectively. A mediator with strong communication skills keeps discussions clear and helps both sides understand each other. Shane M. Boasberg works with a number of skilled mediators and will help you choose the right one for your case.
Who Pays the Attorney Fees
In a child support enforcement, attorney fees are not discretionary, and this surprises people on both sides.
Section 157.167(a) provides that if the court finds the respondent failed to make child support payments, it shall order the respondent to pay the movant's reasonable and necessary attorney fees, court costs, and expenses in addition to the arrearages, and those fees may be enforced by any means available for enforcing child support, including contempt. Subsection (b) applies the same mandatory rule to possession and access violations.
Waiver is narrow. The court may waive fees only for good cause and only if it states the reasons. Where the respondent is in contempt and owes 20,000 dollars or more, fees cannot be waived at all unless the court also finds involuntary unemployment or disability plus a lack of resources. And as of September 1, 2025, fees cannot be waived where the respondent has three prior contempt findings for denying possession.
For a movant that changes the arithmetic of hiring a lawyer. For a respondent it is a reason to take the motion seriously early.
Managing Legal Fees
You can manage the cost of hiring an enforcement lawyer with structured payment plans and sliding-scale fees. Mediation is often quicker and cheaper than a full court fight, which makes it a cost-effective option. An experienced enforcement lawyer can also seek payment of attorney fees from the non-compliant party.
Keeping legal costs in check matters a lot when you’re in an enforcement action.
Recovering Overpaid Child Support
Overpayment runs the other direction, and Texas gives the paying parent a real remedy.
Under Section 154.012, if the obligor is not in arrears and the support obligation has terminated, the obligee must return any payment that exceeds the amount ordered, whether it was made before, on, or after termination. If the obligee does not return it and the obligor has to sue, the court shall order the obligee to pay reasonable attorney fees, court costs, and expenses on top of the overpayment, waivable only for stated good cause.
Both conditions have to be met. This is not a general rule that overpayments always come back.
Talk to an Austin Family Law Order Enforcement Lawyer
Choosing an Austin enforcement lawyer matters here because enforcement is procedural work where the details decide the case, and the details are unforgiving: a motion that does not plead each violation with specificity, a contempt request filed after the two-year window, an order too vague to enforce.
Shane M. Boasberg has practiced Texas law for more than two decades, with a background spanning private practice, the Texas Legislature, and the Office of the Texas Attorney General. He is recognized by Texas Monthly as a Rising Star and belongs to the State Bar of Texas, the Austin Bar Association, and the Capital Area Trial Lawyers Association.
We handle enforcement from both sides. If you are owed support or time with your child, we will tell you which remedies are still open and which deadlines are running. If you have been served with a motion for enforcement and jail is a possibility, that is a case to take seriously from the first day.
What to Ask an Enforcement Lawyer
A few questions will tell you quickly whether an enforcement lawyer does this work regularly.
Which deadline applies to my case, and has it run? Is my order specific enough to be enforced by contempt, or does it need clarifying first? Is what I am owed a support obligation or a debt, and does that change whether contempt is available? If I am the respondent, is incarceration a possible outcome here?
An Austin enforcement lawyer who handles these cases regularly answers those in the first conversation. If the answer is that they will have to look into it, that is useful information too.
Reviews and References
Client reviews tell you how a firm communicates, whether calls get returned, and whether people felt informed as their case moved. Ours are on Google, Yelp, and the BBB.
Summary
Enforcement in Texas comes down to four questions. Which deadline applies, since contempt for child support closes two years after the child turns 18 while a money judgment runs ten. Is the obligation a duty or a debt, which decides whether jail is available at all. Is the order specific enough to be enforced, or does it need clarifying first. And is the motion pleaded with the specificity Section 157.002 requires, because a loosely drafted motion can void an otherwise winning case.
If someone is ignoring a Texas family law order, or you have been served with a motion for enforcement, call the Austin family law order enforcement lawyers at SMB Law, PC at (512) 561-5003. The consultation is free.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What types of court orders can be enforced in Austin?
Child support, spousal maintenance ordered under Chapter 8, possession and access, and property division are all enforceable, but the remedies differ. Support and possession can be enforced by contempt. A property division money award payable from future earnings generally cannot, because the Texas Constitution bars imprisonment for debt.
What are the consequences of not complying with a court order?
Criminal contempt carries up to six months in county jail and a 500 dollar fine per violation, and violations can be stacked. Civil contempt is coercive and lasts until the person complies with a stated purge condition. Unpaid support can also suspend a driver's or professional license, intercept a tax refund, create a lien, and block a passport.
How can an enforcement lawyer help with non-compliance issues?
By getting the deadlines and the pleading right, which is where these cases are usually won or lost. An Austin family law order enforcement attorney will confirm whether the two-year contempt window under Section 157.005(a) is still open, plead each violation with the specificity Section 157.002 requires, and choose between contempt, a money judgment, withholding, a bond, and make-up possession time.
What are the benefits of mediation in enforcement cases?
Mediation can resolve an enforcement dispute faster and more cheaply than a contested hearing, and it works well where the noncompliance came from confusion or a genuine change in circumstances rather than refusal. It is a poor fit where someone is simply refusing to comply, or where a deadline is about to run. Filing first and mediating after preserves your remedies.
How can I choose the best enforcement lawyer in Austin?
Ask whether they handle enforcement regularly and on both sides, which deadline applies to your facts, and whether your order is specific enough to be enforced by contempt as written. In a child support enforcement, also ask about Section 157.167, which makes an award of attorney fees mandatory against a respondent found to have failed to pay.