What Are the Consequences of a Restraining Order?

What Are the Consequences of a Restraining Order?

What does a restraining order do in Texas? It legally requires you to stay away from another person, and in many cases, it goes much further, cutting off your access to firearms, your home, or your own children while it stands. At Fulgham Hampton Criminal Defense Attorneys, our Fort Worth criminal lawyers see how quickly one of these orders can upend a person's life, often before that person has said a word in court.

The paperwork itself can be short, sometimes just a few pages, but the fallout touches nearly everything: where you sleep tonight, whether you can go to work armed if your job requires it, and who picks up your kids from school tomorrow.

If you were just served with paperwork, or you are trying to figure out what happens when someone puts a restraining order on you, this article walks through what the order actually does, how long it lasts, and what happens if it gets violated. We wrote it for people who are still holding the constable's paperwork and trying to figure out what to do in the next 24 hours, not just for a general audience browsing family law topics.

Key Takeaways:

• Federal law adds its own firearm restrictions on top of anything a Texas court orders.
• A restraining order can limit contact, force someone out of a shared home, and restrict firearm possession.
• Texas courts can issue an emergency order the same day, without the other person present.
• Violating a protective order tied to a domestic violence case is a criminal offense, not just a civil problem.
• A final order can last up to two years, and sometimes longer under specific findings.
• A respondent can ask a judge to end or modify the order before it expires.

Restraining Order Versus Protective Order: Why the Words Matter

People in Tarrant County often use "restraining order" as a catch-all term, but Texas law actually separates two different tools. A temporary restraining order usually shows up in a divorce or custody case, stopping either spouse from selling property, draining a bank account, or removing a child from school without notice. A protective order, by contrast, grows out of allegations of family violence, stalking, or abuse, and it carries criminal penalties the moment it's crossed.

The distinction matters because the two documents can look similar on paper while the consequences differ sharply.

We see this confusion often, partly because both types can get filed in family court, and both can restrict where someone lives or goes. A person might expect a routine family law filing, then discover the application also asks for exclusive use of the house and a firearm surrender. Reading the actual request, not just the label on the cover page, tells you which set of rules applies.

What Happens When Someone Puts a Restraining Order on You?

The immediate effect depends on whether the order was granted with notice or issued on an emergency basis. Under Texas Family Code Chapter 83, a judge can sign a temporary ex parte order the same day an application is filed, without you present, if the judge finds a clear and present danger of family violence. That order takes effect the moment you're served, so the first notice you get may be a constable at your door.

From that point, the order can:

• Bar you from contacting the protected person directly, by phone, text, email, or through a third party.
• Require you to stay a set distance from their home, workplace, or a child's school.
• Remove you from a residence you share with the protected person.
• Suspend your right to possess a firearm or ammunition for as long as the order is active.
• Affect custody arrangements or supervised visitation if children are involved.

None of this is automatic once the paperwork is filed. You're entitled to a hearing, and a temporary order can only stay in place for a limited window before the court has to revisit it.

How Long Does a Final Order Last

If the judge finds after a full hearing that family violence occurred, under Texas Family Code Chapter 85, the court renders a protective order that typically runs for up to two years. Certain circumstances, including a finding tied to a more serious offense, allow the court to extend that period well beyond two years. The order has to state its own expiration date, and it stays fully enforceable right up until that date, regardless of whether the two people involved have since reconciled.

Reconciliation is a point worth repeating, because it trips people up constantly. Getting back together with the protected person does not cancel the order. Only a judge can do that.

Resolution Options: Can the Order Be Lifted Early?

The respondent, meaning the person an order was filed against, is not stuck for the full duration in every case. Depending on the type of order and the county, filing a motion to dissolve the order is one route, asking the court to review whether the circumstances that justified the order still exist. A judge weighs the original findings, any new evidence, and whether lifting the order creates a real risk to the protected person before making a decision.

This isn't a formality, and courts in Tarrant, Denton, and Parker counties scrutinize these requests closely, so the motion needs to be built on more than a general request that the order feels unfair now.

An agreed modification is another path when both sides are willing to negotiate specific terms, such as adjusting a distance requirement, changing a pickup location, or allowing limited contact for co-parenting purposes. Either approach starts with understanding exactly what the current order says, since courts won't modify provisions nobody asked to change.

Timing matters here, too. Filing too early, before the record shows any change in circumstances, tends to backfire, since the judge who signed the original order already reviewed the same facts once. Waiting until there's something concrete to point to, whether that's completed counseling, a change in living arrangements, or a documented period without incident, generally makes for a stronger motion.

An attorney who has appeared in front of the specific court handling your case can also give you a realistic read on how that particular judge tends to view early modification requests, which vary more than people expect from one courtroom to the next.

What Are the Consequences of Violating a Restraining Order?

This is where a civil-sounding document turns into a criminal case. Under Texas Penal Code Section 25.07, violating a protective order tied to a domestic violence case, whether it's an ex parte order, a final protective order, or a magistrate's emergency protection order, is a separate criminal offense from whatever conduct led to the order in the first place. Prohibited acts include:

• Contacting the protected person or their family in a threatening or harassing way.
• Going to their home, workplace, or a child's school after being told not to.
• Communicating through a third party when the order prohibits any contact at all.
• Interfering with a pet or companion animal owned by the protected person.
• Tampering with a required GPS monitoring device.

A violation is generally charged as a Class A misdemeanor, carrying up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000. It escalates to a third-degree felony, punishable by two to 10 years in prison, when the violation involves an assault or the offense of stalking, or when the person has two or more previous convictions under Section 25.07 or Section 25.072. Each separate act, including each individual message, can be charged on its own, which is how a short series of contacts becomes several pending cases.

Firearms, Housing, and Custody Fallout

Beyond the criminal exposure, a protective order reaches into parts of daily life that surprise a lot of respondents. Federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) makes it a separate federal crime for a person subject to a qualifying protective order to possess a firearm, layered on top of whatever the Texas order itself restricts.

That federal restriction runs alongside the Texas order rather than replacing it, and it applies no matter which county issued the order. A person can face a federal charge for possessing a firearm even where no Texas court has separately said so.

Housing gets complicated, too. A judge can order a respondent out of a shared residence even if that person's name is on the lease or the mortgage, if the court finds it necessary for the protected person's safety. That exclusion can happen even when the respondent has nowhere else lined up to stay, and it takes effect immediately rather than on some future move-out date.

Custody and visitation frequently get restructured as well, sometimes shifting to supervised exchanges through a third party or a designated facility until the case resolves.

Employment prospects can take a hit too, particularly for anyone in a field that requires bonding, security clearance, or a firearm as part of the job description. Security officers, some commercial drivers, and law enforcement applicants have all had to disclose an active protective order during licensing or hiring review, and how that disclosure gets framed and explained often matters just as much as the underlying facts.

How Local Courts Handle Enforcement

Tarrant, Denton, and Parker county courts don't treat protective order violations as a low priority, and officers responding to a call involving an active order are required to act on it. If a protected person reports contact that violates the order's terms, the responding officer can arrest the respondent without first getting a warrant, as long as there's probable cause to believe a violation occurred. That's a different standard than most misdemeanor calls, where officers often issue a citation instead of making an arrest on the spot.

Local dispatchers can pull up an active order the same way they'd check an outstanding warrant, since Texas maintains a statewide protective order registry that every law enforcement agency in the state can access directly. That means an order issued in a Fort Worth courtroom is enforceable the moment a Weatherford or Southlake officer runs your name, regardless of which office originally handled the case. Anyone who assumes a protective order only carries weight in the county where it was signed is working from outdated information.

FAQs: What Does a Restraining Order Do

Talk to a Fort Worth Lawyer Before Your Next Court Date

A restraining order rarely stays contained to one part of your life. It can reach your home, your gun safe, your parenting schedule, and your criminal record all at once, and the deadlines involved move faster than most people expect. Waiting to see how things play out on their own tends to close off options rather than preserve them, particularly once a hearing date gets set.

If you're facing a domestic violence-related restraining order, or you've already been accused of violating one, our attorneys at Fulgham Hampton represent clients across Fort Worth, Arlington, Bedford, Weatherford, and Southlake. Call the office nearest you to talk through what the order actually says and what your options look like from here.