A Sheriff has jailed a mother for seven days after she stopped her twelve-year-old daughter seeing her father for more than a year. The order she broke was one she had agreed to herself. She never asked the court to change it, and her only explanation was that her daughter no longer wanted to go. That, the Sheriff held, came nowhere near a defence. Breaching a contact order in Scotland is contempt of court, and this decision sets out very plainly what the courts expect of the parent a child lives with.
Contact arrangements come under strain in all sorts of families, and usually for perfectly understandable reasons. Work patterns change. Children get older and busier. One parent moves away. Most of these problems get sorted out between the parents, sometimes with a little help.
Occasionally, though, a case reaches court that shows what happens when a parent simply stops complying and hopes the whole thing will go away. Breaching a contact order is not a technicality, and the Glasgow case below shows exactly why.
What happened in the Glasgow case
The judgment has been anonymised to protect the child, so the parties appear as Charlie Foxtrot and Delta Echo. You can read the full judgment on the Scottish Courts website. The names do not matter. The principles apply right across Scotland, including here in Fife.
A father held a contact order giving him time with his daughter three times a week. The order dated from June 2023, and for nearly two years it worked beautifully. He took her on day trips. She asked to start staying overnight once he bought a bigger house, and had a sleepover there with four of her friends. She was close to her paternal grandparents, aunt and cousins. Father and daughter spoke on the phone most nights.
Their last contact session was a Thursday in April 2025, a day out at Luss on Loch Lomond with three of her pals. She hugged him goodbye and messaged him cheerfully that evening asking for the photographs.
Then it stopped. Over the following fourteen months, the child missed more than 150 contact sessions.
The mother’s position was that her daughter no longer wished to see her father. The Sheriff found she had done a great deal more than passively accept that. She booked a dance competition over a contact weekend. She collected the child from school early to stop handovers. On one occasion she pulled her daughter out of her father’s car by the arm, in the school car park, shouting. She had him removed from the school’s mailing list and emergency contact list. She blocked his calls and messages. She moved house and enrolled the child at a different secondary school without telling him.
Sheriff Reid found her in contempt of court. He described her disregard of the order as deliberate and prolonged, and the contempt itself as “protracted, brazen and entrenched”. A fine was not realistic, since she is self-employed on a modest income and already owed her ex-partner a substantial sum in expenses. He ordered seven days’ imprisonment.
The contact order she breached was one she had agreed
This is the detail most reports of the case leave out, and it is arguably the most important one.
The order was not imposed on an unwilling mother after a fight. She had defended the original action for two years, with legal advice throughout. Then, in April 2023, she signed a joint minute agreeing the contact arrangements. The Sheriff simply gave effect to what the parents had settled between them.
That matters, because many people assume an agreed order is somehow softer than a contested one. It is not. Once the court interpones authority to a joint minute, the result is a court order like any other. Breaching a contact order carries precisely the same consequences whether a Sheriff imposed it or you signed up to it. If you agree terms today, you are bound by them tomorrow.
What the law actually asks of the resident parent
Here is the principle that surprises most parents. Under Scots law, the parent a child lives with does not merely have to allow contact. They have a positive duty to encourage, promote and facilitate it.
That duty goes back to Blance v Blance in 1978, where a father used to tell his children that anyone who wanted to go should put their coat on. The court held that this was not good enough. The parent with care must persuade, encourage and, where necessary, firmly instruct the child to go, stopping short only of physical force.
The courts describe this as using both the carrot and the stick. With an older child it means reasoning and argument rather than simply giving in. As one senior judge put it, parenting can be a very big ask — but getting a child to do something they would rather not do, whether that is homework, the dentist or contact with a parent, is the job.
Why “she didn’t want to go” was not a defence
A child’s views genuinely do matter. Under section 11 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, the court must give a child the chance to express a view and must weigh it according to age and maturity. Parliament went further in the Children (Scotland) Act 2020, though several of its key provisions on children’s views have still to be brought into force.
So the Sheriff was not brushing the girl aside. He drew a much sharper distinction than that. The question in contempt proceedings is not what the child now wants. It is what the resident parent actually did to encourage, promote and facilitate the relationship the court had ordered. A child’s reluctance, on its own, does not excuse breaching a contact order.
On that, the evidence was thin. On her own account, all the mother had done was ask her daughter every couple of weeks whether she fancied seeing her dad, then accept the answer. The Sheriff called that woefully inadequate.
He went further still. A letter arrived from solicitors acting for the child, confirming she did not want contact. He gave it no material weight. It had not been tested in evidence, it offered no rational explanation for such a sudden change of heart, and he considered it unreliable — the product of a prolonged course of parental alienation and a child’s understandable wish to keep the peace with the parent she lives with.
When you genuinely can stop contact
None of this means contact must always continue whatever happens. The law recognises real exceptions.
Where there is a genuine risk of harm to the child, or to the resident parent, a parent may well have a reasonable excuse for not complying. Safety comes first, always. The difficulty here was that no such risk was ever suggested, never mind proved.
Even a genuine concern does not entitle you to stop contact yourself, though. The lawful route is to go back to court and ask for the order to be varied or suspended. This mother never did. She never lodged a minute seeking any change. She never contacted the father to explain a concern or propose an alternative — not even letterbox contact. The first time she said in writing that the child was unwilling was in her formal Answers, eight months after contact had stopped.
What breaching a contact order in Scotland can cost you
Contempt is treated as quasi-criminal, so it must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. That is a high bar, and rightly so. Once it is cleared, however, the consequences of breaching a contact order are very real.
- Imprisonment or a fine. In the sheriff court, the maximum penalty under section 15 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 is three months in prison, a fine of up to £2,500, or both. In the Court of Session it rises to two years.
- Expenses. This mother was found liable for her ex-partner’s legal costs on four separate occasions, including the cost of a proof diet discharged at her own request.
- Time. Contact stopped in April 2025. The imprisonment was ordered in June 2026. That is fourteen months of a child’s life.
- Procedure. The father’s first attempt actually failed. He lodged a minute in the original case file, but that action had already concluded, so the minute was incompetent and was dismissed. He had to start again with a fresh summary application, losing three and a half months.
That last point is worth dwelling on. Enforcement is not simply a matter of telling the court that someone has misbehaved. Getting the procedure right at the outset saves months, which is why early advice matters so much.
If contact is breaking down, here is what to do
If you are the parent being denied contact:
- Keep a dated note of every missed session, including where you went and what happened.
- Save the messages. In this case, WhatsApp threads did much of the evidential work.
- Put things in writing rather than relying on phone calls.
- Keep paying child maintenance. Contact and maintenance are separate obligations.
- Ask about mediation. Relationships Scotland runs family mediation services nationwide.
- Take advice early, before positions harden.
If you are the parent with concerns about contact:
- Raise the concern with the other parent in writing, and keep a copy.
- Do not stop contact and wait to be challenged. That is how parents end up breaching a contact order without ever intending to.
- Offer an alternative, even a reduced or indirect one, while things are sorted out.
- If agreement proves impossible, apply to the court to vary or suspend the order.
- Check whether you qualify for help with fees through the Scottish Legal Aid Board.
Whichever side you are on, the underlying message is the same. The order stands until a court changes it.
Why choose Morgans
Morgans has looked after families across west Fife and Kinross-shire since 1993, from our offices in Dunfermline and Kinross. Our family law team advises on residence and contact for children, separation and divorce, financial provision and separation agreements.
Disputes about children are rarely just legal problems. They are among the hardest things a family will go through, and the temptation to take matters into your own hands can be overwhelming. Our job is to keep you on the right side of that line while we sort out the substance.
Where agreement is possible, we will help you reach it and record it properly — our article on the advantages of a separation agreement explains why that is usually the better route. Where court action is unavoidable, our court team will handle it. Our fees are explained and agreed at the outset, and you deal with the same people from start to finish.
Talk to our family law team
If you are being kept from your child, or you have real worries about an existing order, the worst thing you can do is nothing. The second worst is to act on your own and risk breaching a contact order yourself. Come and talk it through with us first.
Dunfermline Office — Morgans, 33 East Port, Dunfermline, Fife, KY12 7JE · 01383 620222 Kinross Office — Morgans, 62 High Street, Kinross, KY13 8AN · 01577 863424
Email enquiries@morganlaw.co.uk or use the contact form on our website. You are also welcome to meet the team before you get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
Can you go to prison for breaching a contact order in Scotland?
Yes, though it remains a last resort. A contact order is a court order, and deliberately disobeying it is contempt of court. In the sheriff court the maximum penalty is three months’ imprisonment, a fine of up to £2,500, or both. Prison is reserved for breaches that are wilful, prolonged and without reasonable excuse, as in the Glasgow case. Most contact disputes are resolved long before this point, particularly where advice is taken early.
What counts as contempt of court in a child contact case?
Contempt means deliberately disobeying a court order. The Sheriff must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the parent knew the terms of the order, breached it without reasonable excuse, and knew the facts that made their conduct a breach. Importantly, doing nothing can amount to breaching a contact order. A parent who simply leaves the decision to the child is not complying.
My child says they do not want to see their other parent. What should I do?
Take it seriously, but do not stop contact. You have a legal duty to encourage, promote and facilitate the relationship, which means persuading and, if need be, firmly instructing your child to go. Record what you have tried. If you have genuine welfare or safety concerns, take advice and apply to the court to vary the order. Stopping contact yourself is what exposes you to enforcement action.
Does a contact order still apply if my circumstances have changed?
Yes. A contact order stays in full force until a court varies or suspends it. New job, new partner, new address, new school — none of these change the order. You can agree a variation with the other parent and have it recorded properly, or you can apply to the sheriff court. Until one of those things happens, the existing order stands.
What if the order was agreed rather than decided by a Sheriff?
It makes no difference. Once the court gives effect to a joint minute, the resulting decree is a court order in the ordinary sense, and breaching a contact order agreed in that way is treated exactly the same. The mother in the Glasgow case had agreed her order after two years of legally advised negotiation, and it did not soften the outcome one bit.
How long does it take to enforce a contact order?
Longer than most people expect. In the Glasgow case, fourteen months passed between contact stopping and the penalty being imposed, and part of that delay came from an application made the wrong way at the first attempt. Straightforward cases move faster, but this is one of the strongest arguments for taking proper advice at the very start rather than several months in.