My ex won't follow our child arrangements order: what can I do?

If your ex is not sticking to a child arrangements order, refusing contact, dropping the children back late, or cancelling at the last minute, the order is legally binding, and you can ask the family court to enforce it. But enforcement is slower, and often blunter, than frustrated parents expect, and some of the advice circulating online (much of it from other countries) can make things worse. Here is how enforcement actually works in England and Wales, and, just as importantly, what not to do.

My ex won’t follow the child arrangements order, what can I do?

Your options run from sorting it out directly, through mediation, to applying to court to enforce the order. The court does have real powers, but it uses them in a graduated way, and its focus throughout is the children’s welfare rather than punishing the other parent. Many parents come to enforcement expecting their ex to be made to pay for what they have done; in practice the court is far more interested in getting contact working again than in punishment. Keeping that in mind from the outset will save you a good deal of frustration.

Is it a court order, or just an agreement?

This is the first thing to be clear about, because it changes everything: only a court order can be enforced. If you and your ex agreed arrangements between yourselves, a verbal understanding, a written parenting plan, or even something reached at mediation, that is not, on its own, legally binding, and there is nothing for the court to enforce.

If that is your situation, the route is not enforcement; it is to apply for a child arrangements order in the first place, after the usual mediation step, so that you have an order that can be enforced if it is broken. A child arrangements order, by contrast, is binding on both parents, and orders made since December 2008 carry a warning notice setting out the consequences of breaking them.

What counts as breaching an order?

Not every missed or rearranged visit is a breach the court will act on. A breach is a failure to comply without a reasonable excuse. Refusing contact outright, repeatedly cancelling at the last minute, or consistently returning the children late without good reason can all amount to a breach. A child genuinely too ill to travel, by contrast, is a reasonable excuse, not a breach.

The law puts the burden on the parent who broke the order to show they had a reasonable excuse, on the balance of probabilities. But the court must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the breach happened at all, the same standard as in a criminal case, which is why a clear record matters.

Try to resolve it first, and keep a record

Before applying to court, you are generally expected to have tried to resolve things, and in most cases to have attended a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting, or MIAM, though there are exemptions, including for domestic abuse. Judges look more favourably on a parent who has tried to make contact work than on one who has gone straight to court.

That does not mean tolerating persistent breaches. It means sending a polite, factual message asking for the order to be followed, proposing sensible alternatives where a genuine clash arises, and, crucially, keeping a written record of each missed or disrupted contact, with dates and what happened. That record is what an enforcement application is built on. Our page on family mediation explains how mediation can help where communication has broken down.

Applying to enforce: Form C79 and what the court can do

If the breaches continue, you apply to enforce the order using Form C79. There is a court fee, £270 as of mid-2026, and help with fees is available if you are on a low income.

If the court is satisfied the order has been broken without reasonable excuse, it has a range of powers. It can issue a warning; refer you both to a parenting programme (Planning Together for Children) or to mediation; vary the order to make it clearer or more workable; make an enforcement order requiring the other parent to do between 40 and 200 hours of unpaid work; order them to pay compensation for financial loss you have suffered because of the breach, such as a cancelled holiday; impose a fine; or, as a genuine last resort, commit them to prison for contempt of court. An officer from Cafcass, or CAFCASS Cymru in Wales, is usually involved, carrying out safeguarding checks and sometimes reporting on the likely impact of any enforcement on the children. GOV.UK sets out the basics of how to change or enforce an order.

What enforcement won’t do

This is the part that disappoints people, so it is worth being honest about. The court’s overriding duty is to the children’s welfare, not to punishing your ex, and that shapes everything. The court may decide not to enforce the existing order at all if it concludes the other parent had a good reason, or that a different arrangement would now be better for the children. Even where it does act, it often starts at the gentler end, a warning, a referral, a variation, rather than unpaid work or a fine, because punishing the parent the children live with can rebound on the children themselves.

There is also a natural limit. A “spends time with” arrangement generally comes to an end when a child turns 16, and the order ends entirely at 18. As children move into their mid-teens their own wishes carry growing weight, and the court will not, in practice, force a reluctant teenager to spend time with a parent against their will.

What not to do: don’t take matters into your own hands

Some of the most common advice online, much of it from the US and elsewhere, where the law is different, is actively harmful here. Two things in particular are worth spelling out.

Do not withhold the children in retaliation. Stopping the other parent’s time because they breached yours is itself a breach of the order, and taking matters into your own hands tends to count against you when the court weighs each parent’s conduct. And do not stop, or withhold, child maintenance. Maintenance and contact are legally separate in England and Wales: child maintenance is dealt with through the Child Maintenance Service, and you cannot lawfully withhold contact because maintenance is unpaid, or withhold maintenance because contact is being refused. The two do not cancel each other out, and treating them as if they do simply creates a second problem. If the order is being broken, the answer is to go back to the court, not to break it yourself.

How we help

Our family law team helps parents across South Wales and the South West deal with child arrangements that have broken down, whether that means getting an order in the first place, enforcing one that is being ignored, or finding a more workable arrangement through mediation. We will tell you honestly what enforcement is likely to achieve in your situation before you spend money on it. To talk it through, request a callback and we will come back to you.

A note on figures: the fees and figures in this article are correct as at the date of publication shown on this article. Court fees, taxes and other charges change from time to time, so please check the current figures with the relevant official source before relying on them.