PT20M39S
“a criminal protection order is not something you have to seek out so if you are um charged with a criminal offense usually a domestic violence charge um the protection order automatically enters against you by the criminal courts now that you don't have any say over you can sometimes get it modified but that one is going to enter no matter no matter what happens it's called an mpo or a mandatory protection order”
“so it is possible to have two protection orders issued against you so you can have the criminal protection order so if you're charged for a domestic violence case and you're put into jail and you're going through the criminal court system you have that mandatory protection order on you from the criminal side but then a victim in a case can also file a civil protection order or request a temporary protection order and then get that protection order made permanent so a person can have two different protection orders for the same thing”
“and in that time you have this paperwork it's a court order you have to then personally serve the person that you are wanting a protection order from which kind of sounds counterintuitive because if you don't want contact with this person you don't want to have to personally serve them so a lot of ways people get this done is they either hire a private investigator or a pi to do it or you can even go to the sheriff's office and get a sheriff's deputy to personally serve it for you”
“now with that temporary protection order it is only good for that certain amount of time usually 14 days if you don't get the person served you don't have a protection order”
“caitlin then as the respondent to the protection order has to show up in court because if she has been served and she doesn't show up i automatically win i get that protection order so this is something where people will call us and say well someone just served me with a protection order i don't want to go you have to go otherwise you're basically admitting yes yes you can get a production order against me”
“then they there is a hearing to determine whether or not that temporary protection order needs to be made permanent and in civil cases a civil protection order can be made permanent for a lifetime whereas a criminal protection order like we talked about before um those only last for the duration of the criminal case but a civil one can last forever”
“now you have every right to have a lawyer help you through every stage of this a lot of people come to us after they've been served with a protection order and they will say well i need a lawyer to help me on this can you represent me we can jump in and fight this with you um we also with protection orders we do understand that some people do need protection orders so we also can help people file protection orders um but you can have a lawyer if you go in and you're served with a protection order and you don't know what you're doing you can tell the magistrate hey i need another court date because i need to hire a lawyer to help me with this”
“basically a mini trial so the person the petitioner or the person who's requesting a protection order to enter will have to tell the magistrate all the reasons why they want to have a protection order issued they have to make sure that anything that they are trying to bring into court is actually already listed in the protection order so this is where we see people doing protection orders wrong quite a bit you have to contain everything you want within the four corners of the protection order hypothetically like you can add extra pages if you need to but everything that you're going to address in court has to be listed in that protection order if you go outside of what you wrote the the court isn't going to let you go into that”
“way that you can have that lifted is the person who initially requested the protection order they can come back and say okay i it's been a couple of years i'm no longer afraid i'm willing to lift this i don't want it so they can ask for it to be lifted okay or the person who had the protection order issued against them can come back and say hey nothing has happened there haven't been any violations i don't want this anymore can we please get it lifted now for that to happen it has to be at least a two-year period so you can't ask for it to be lifted until two years have passed”
“so a protection order can either be denied with prejudice or without prejudice what that means is if someone is and we have this with a lot of our clients that they'll have people who like i see this with neighbors all the time neighbors will file protection orders against each other which please don't do that just just stop putting a bigger fence put some trees in but um with with people who are filing protection orders over and over a lot of times we get asked the question well how do i make it stop how can i make them stop filing protection orders so if a judge dismisses or a magistrate i keep saying judge but if a magistrate dismisses a protection order without prejudice that means the person can try again okay so they can refile based on the same claims the same facts they can refile and ask for a protection order again based on the same things that were already contained if a magistrate dismisses a case with prejudice what that means is the magistrate says okay all the stuff that you put in here for the protection order you can't do that again you cannot come back and try to get a protection order for the exact same reasons against this person again”
“an emergency protective order just in regular i say regular but in legal terms that actually is referring to protection orders generally in family law cases so you can get protection orders in criminal cases those are mpos or mandatory protection orders um you can get protection orders by filing them that's a civil protection order or a tpo or ppo and then the epos because we like to have acronyms for everything the emergency protection orders normally are seen in family law cases now we are not a family law firm we are not experts in family law we do have some good resources for that if you're interested in that information but just as a general rule an emergency protective order is normally seen usually in relation to custody issues where if one parent is trying to leave with the kids and the other parent doesn't want them to they can file an emergency protection order saying we need to have this address right now they can't leave the state with my kids”
“the only way that they can get that off usually is to testify in the civil protection order case but anything that you say as everyone probably knows can and will be used against you that includes in other cases yeah so if you get up and you are trying to do a protection order on your own but you have a criminal case you have to know that anything that you say in that civil protection order hearing there's going to be a transcript the state or the da can pull that transcript and use every single thing you say against you so when i have clients who are dealing with kind of an assault on two fronts what i tell them is okay number one don't say anything without me ever ever but two we can often fight a protection order on the civil side without the criminal client having to testify if we can bring in other witnesses who can rebut it”
“when you're facing criminal charges shut up keep your mouth shut at all times everywhere and let your lawyer do all the talking for you and do the strategies that we're here for”
“the big thing to keep in mind is on protection orders there are two different kinds of protection orders one is a civil protection order and one is a criminal protection order”
“you if you are the one looking for protection you do not want to then go up to the person and hand it to them that have to be done for it to be an effective personal service so a pi or private investigator or a sheriff's deputy will know what they need to do to affect that”
“now you have to get through a certain number of steps to get a permanent protection order or to prevent a permanent protection order from entering on you”
“when you're facing criminal charges shut up keep your mouth shut at all times everywhere and let your lawyer do all the talking for you”
“we do also do temporary and permanent protection order hearings because they have so much overlap with the criminal court system”
“criminal courts operate much more slowly than the civil protection order docket”
“we are partially virtual so bringing everybody together and making sure everybody has that team environment is good”