Legal Question in Family Law in Ohio

In Ohio, you can only be held in contempt for failing to do what the judge wrote that you must do in the court order. If the Judge said you must transfer the card into your name, then if you haven't you may be found in contempt. If the Court merely said you must pay off the card, and you did that, then that would be a complete defense to the contempt of court charge.

Typically, if you are found to have disobeyed the Court's order, the court will sanction you, but will give you a chance to purge the contempt by doing what the court originally ordered within a short time period. For instance, if the Court ordered you to pay off the card by January 15 of this year, and you still have not done so, then the Court will hold you in contempt, sentence you to a certain number of days in jail, but then say you don't have to report to jail if you do what the court said to do within 15 days of the finding of contempt. You may also have to pay the other side's attorney fees.

The fact that the other side has not followed the judge's order will not be a defense to the contempt action unless you can show that their failure to act caused your failure (perhaps you were counting on the money you were going to get from selling the guns to pay off the credit card if that was what the judge required in his order). Otherwise, the proper way to get him to return the guns to you would be to request his compliance with the court's order in writing a few times, and then bring your own motion for contempt if he does not give them over.