Punishment for Violation of Court Order Requires Actual Knowledge

Tennessee case summary on automatic injunction in divorce.

The wife in this Davidson County, Tennessee, case filed for divorce in 2017. She filed a motion for temporary support in early 2018. Shortly thereafter, the husband filed a motion to require the wife to return funds taken from their joint accounts.

The wife later filed a similar motion asking the husband to return money allegedly withdrawn. She followed up with motions that these withdrawals constituted violations of the statutory injunction. A hearing was held in March 2019 before Judge Phillip R. Robinson, who found the husband guilty of six charges of contempt. The husband was sentenced to 26 days in jail, but the trial court indicated that it would consider suspending the sentence if the money were repaid. The husband posted a bond and appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The husband first argued that the trial court had violated a rule requiring findings of fact and conclusions of law. But the appeals court held that the trial court’s order was sufficient in this regard. It then turned to the merits of whether the husband’s conduct constituted criminal contempt. Criminal contempt is reserved for cases of willful violations of a court order, and the person charged is presumed innocent and must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, the husband argued that the element of willfulness had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

In particular, the husband argued that it had not been proven that he had knowledge of his duty to obey the automatic statutory injunction.

The trial court had pointed to documents filed by the husband’s original attorney, in which he acknowledged receipt of the complaint containing the statutory injunction. However, the appeals court pointed out that there was no evidence that the husband himself—rather than the attorney—had personal knowledge of the injunction. The wife argued that the husband could be found in contempt from imputed knowledge—that there was a presumption that the husband knew of the injunction because his attorney knew.

The appeals court found that this issue was somewhat “murky,” and it cited a number of cases, both from Tennessee and other states addressing the question. The court took particular note of a California case which held that allowing contempt for imputed knowledge would run afoul of the presumption of innocence.

The court agreed with this reasoning, and noted that the only evidence of knowledge cited by the lower court was the imputed knowledge. The appeals court pointed out that it might be proper to draw an inference of knowledge from the attorney’s knowledge. However, it was not proper to presume knowledge in these circumstances. Since the appeals court could not determine exactly why the lower court had reached its decision, it vacated the lower court’s opinion and remanded the case for further proceedings.

No. M2019-00933-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 27, 2020).

See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see The Tennessee Divorce Process: How Divorces Work Start to Finish.