You have been arrested for domestic violence. Can you go back to your house?
Hi, I am Brandon Fulgham with the Fulgham Law Firm. Thank you for joining us here today. I want to welcome you to our YouTube channel, and today I want to talk about Domestic Violence and Protective Orders. Maybe you have been wrongfully arrested for domestic violence, some type of Family Violence allegation, and now you have been released from jail, and you have no idea, am I legally allowed to go back to the house? How does this protective order thing work? I have just been given a lengthy list of conditions of things I am being told that I can or cannot do. How does this play in with me being able to have contact with someone? By the way, if you wait around to the end of this video, I am going to give you that free eBook, and we are going to spend a little bit of time talking more about domestic violence. So, let us jump into this.
Number one, let us talk about Emergency Protective Orders. Emergency protective orders are really broken down into two parts. Number one, do you have a protective order in place? Number two, what about a no contact order? Now under Texas law, what is an emergency protective order? Well, under Texas law, if you are arrested for domestic violence, even if you do not end up having a charge brought against you, many times a domestic violence arrest will in end up requiring at least a 30, 60, or 90-day emergency protective order that is issued.
Now, I am going to just tell you this. If you were arrested or the allegation were to have happened at your house, one of the places that is going to be listed on that protective order is that you cannot go back to the location where the incident took place. Okay, so you need to know that. We have had many clients that end up getting arrested later for violation of protective order because they ended up going back to their house, they did not actually read what that protective order said.
Okay, so number one, where did the incident happen? What does the protective order say? You are not allowed to go back to where you are prohibited from going back to. So, it is important to realize number one, those arise automatically out of a domestic violence issue, but number two, the question becomes an emergency protective order, how do I remove it? Is there a way that I can remove that protective order?
Under Texas law, what can happen is an attorney can file a motion to modify a protective order. What happens is you would need to hire an attorney. A criminal attorney can get on that and file a motion to modify the protective order. And one of the first questions that needs to be brought up by your criminal lawyer is, okay, first of all, does the alleged victim want to prosecute? Are they willing to drop the case? Are they willing to provide an affidavit in order to say that they are no longer scared, or they're not cons that you know, maybe this has been blown out of proportion? They want to identify very clearly, they are not presently in fear of the defendant, the person who has actually been charged with this and given the protective order. If that affidavit is provided, it greatly increases the probability of a much speedier approval for a request to modify that protective order. The judge could turn around and modify that order to allow what they call complete contact. You could have total contact and just remove the order completely, or they could allow no harmful or injurious contact between the parties, which would then mean that you could have contact with that person.
And more importantly, you want to be able to go back home. Okay, you want to be able to know that you can stay in the residence that you are paying for and that it is your residence. Okay, now what if the alleged victim wants to prosecute, but you have supporting documentation to show that something did not happen the way that it went down? Or maybe you are able to show that that person, that alleged family member, is not actually living at the location that was listed in the report. Well, in one of those situations, your attorney can also file a motion to modify the protective order, have an actual formal hearing where that information can be shared, and you can make sure and know that you are being protected. So that way, there is a possibility that that protective order can still be modified so that you can go back home. For instance, we had a client that we represented where we were able to show that the alleged victim was living in a completely different place. And then, after confirming that that was the case, the judge changed that protective order to allow the client to move back home so that they did not have to continue to pay for a hotel while they were fighting their case.
Now, if that protective order is not removed, you could end up with being able to make other modifications to that protective order, but it must be done through the efforts of your attorney. Okay, now finally, what about the protective order? What about the no-contact order? What if you got a list of bond conditions and those bond conditions say you are not allowed to contact someone? Well, how does that happen? Well, many times, that happens automatically because of the fact that Texas has the zero-tolerance approach, and the legislature and the courts have decided that they want to do everything that they can to protect the alleged victim and to keep the person that's been charged with that offense from continuing that contact while the case is pending."
Tolerance policies for domestic violence cases. So, one of the things that can happen there, you can go back, go about the same process to remove that no-contact order on your bond conditions if particularly if that alleged victim wants to have contact with you. If that family member wants to be able to have contact, if they do not want to prosecute, if they are willing to provide that affidavit, you need to make sure and facilitate having your criminal attorney be able to interact and take care of that issue for you. Because that way, you can get a hearing date in front of that judge, and that motion can be filed so that you are able to remove a restrictive bond condition.
Now, I know I kind of went a little bit in the weeds here, but if you or a loved one is facing this sort of situation, particularly as a first-time offender, it is a little overwhelming. The worst thing is to be arrested for something you did not do and then not even be able to go back home. You are not even able to go back to your residence. There are ways to be able to modify these orders, but you need an experienced attorney to make sure and step in and help you with that. If you or a loved one are facing this type of offense in the North Texas area, do not hesitate to contact the Fulgham Law Firm at the number you see above. We will be happy to provide you with a free case analysis and consultation and see if we can be a good fit for you.
Okay, now I promised you that free eBook. Essentially, it is the ultimate guide to domestic violence. This is how to beat a domestic violence case in Texas, and it gives you a little bit of a more in-depth look at how Texas handles domestic violence cases. Click on through down to the bottom of the page on the YouTube video here, and you will see a link. You put in Your email address; we will send that over to you. And if you have liked what you have heard here today, subscribe to our YouTube channel, like this video. We will get you more great content just like this. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next time."