Can an Oklahoma P.O Haunt You For Life?

Video Transcribed: How long could a protective order last in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa attorney, James Wirth, and I’m about to discuss that with you. Okay, so you filed for a protective order or it’s filed against you. How long can it last? Well, there’s been a little bit of changes in the laws over the years. A protective order act went in place in 1982. From that point to 1999, a protective order could be continuous or lifetime. And from that time frame, people got into the habit of calling it a permanent protective order because it was in place essentially forever.

But the law changed in 1999. And at that point, the legislature decided they should have a three-year max. So, it had a three-year max for the time period of November 1st of 1999 until November 1st of 2012. In 2012, the law was changed again, it was decided that three years wasn’t long enough and it was expanded to five years. But it also had a caveat where you could get a lifetime under the right circumstances.

So the way the law is right now, a typical protective order, the maximum length of time is five years. But if you meet these requirements that the person has a history of violating court or governmental orders, or the person has previously been convicted of a violent felony, or the person has a felony stalking conviction and a prior final order of protection, or the court is going to take into consideration a history of domestic violence or other violent acts.

So if the court finds that one of those requirements is met, then at that point, the court can say five years is not enough, I’m going to make it a lifetime protective order or a continuous protective order.

But there are a couple other things to keep in mind, as well, about the five-year protective order. One. If someone is incarcerated for something related to the protective order during that time frame, the period of incarceration does not count in that five years. So, it could go beyond five years for that reason.

But there’s a recent court case that actually limits it in some cases into less than five years for the final protective order. And that case essentially said that if the emergency protective order is continued for an extended amount of time, sometimes we extend them for six months, a year, and say we’ll dismiss if there’s no violations during that time.

So if that was done, let’s say it’s extended for a year, the emergency is. And then you come back in a year, they allege there are violations, the court finds there is violations and decides to enter a final protective order and tries to do that for five years.

Well that’s what happened in this case, and it went up on appeal and the judge decided, well you can’t do five years on top of the one year pass. It’s five years total. So in that case, they reversed it and they went ahead and reduced that so that the total amount is not more than five years.

But if you’ve got these circumstances going on and want to find out how the law is applicable to you, don’t take this video and my general information at my word. Get my specific information from a consultation regarding your specifics. Give me a call if you want to talk to an attorney about it. (918) 932-2800.