Restraining Orders

Although I am cannot speak to STATE’S laws, oftentimes, how far a respondent has to stay away from a petitioner may be included in the actual order that is issued by the judge. Sometimes, orders will state a specific distance that the respondent needs to stay away, such as “stay away at least 500 feet”. If your order does not have that information in it, you may want to talk to an attorney to see if perhaps there is a commonly accepted stay-away distance under your state’s laws or based on other STATE court cases. In addition, it may be possible that if someone is unsure about a term of his/her protection order, s/he may be able to ask the judge to clarify the term and issue a revised order at his/her next court date (if there is an upcoming court date). If there is no upcoming court date, a litigant who is unsure of the terms of the order may want to ask a lawyer for advice as to whether or not s/he can file to modify the order to ask the judge to clarify the term. I do not know if this is a possibility in your situation or not so you may want to ask a lawyer for advice.

Again, if you do not have any upcoming court dates, perhaps an attorney may be able to best advise you as to whether you may be able to (and whether or not your should) go to court to amend the order to try to include specific stay away terms. Here is a link for free and paid lawyers: LINK. And here is a link with some more info on restraining orders in case it is useful: LINK