Different types of restraining orders address different situations and relationships. Understanding which type applies to your circumstances ensures you pursue the correct legal remedy and meet applicable requirements. Choosing the right restraining order type affects eligibility, procedures, and available protections.
Domestic Violence Restraining Orders
Domestic violence restraining orders protect victims of abuse, threats, or harassment by people with whom they have close relationships. Qualifying relationships typically include current or former spouses, current or former dating partners, parents of shared children, siblings, parents and children, and people who currently or previously lived together.
The conduct justifying domestic violence orders includes physical abuse, sexual assault, threats of violence, stalking, harassment, and disturbing the peace of the household. Courts can order the restrained person to stay away, move out of shared residences, and surrender firearms. Child custody and support provisions may be included when children are involved.
Civil Harassment Restraining Orders
Civil harassment restraining orders address harassment, threats, or violence from people who don't have domestic relationships with you. Neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers may be subject to civil harassment orders. These orders provide similar protections to domestic violence orders but apply to relationships that don't meet domestic violence definitions.
The conduct required for civil harassment orders typically must be more serious than for domestic violence orders. Courts generally require showing credible threats of violence or harassment that serves no legitimate purpose and causes substantial emotional distress. A single incident rarely suffices unless involving actual violence or serious threats.
Stalking Restraining Orders
Stalking protective orders specifically address patterns of conduct that cause reasonable fear for safety. Stalking involves repeated unwanted contact, following, surveillance, or other conduct that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. These orders may be available regardless of relationship status and focus specifically on stalking behavior patterns.
Stalking behaviors include following or appearing at locations repeatedly, making unwanted contact through calls, texts, or mail, using technology to track or surveil, and sending unwanted gifts. The pattern of conduct, rather than any single incident, typically establishes stalking.
Workplace Violence Restraining Orders
Employers can seek restraining orders to protect employees from individuals who have made credible threats of violence or engaged in violent conduct at work. These orders protect all employees at the workplace location rather than just individual victims. The employer, not individual employees, typically must petition for workplace violence orders.
Workplace violence situations may also support other restraining order types when the threat-maker has domestic or harassment relationships with individual employees. Individual employees can pursue those orders personally while employers address broader workplace safety through workplace violence orders.
Elder Abuse Restraining Orders
Elder abuse restraining orders protect individuals 65 and older or dependent adults from abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation. These orders can address physical abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment, financial exploitation, and neglect by caregivers or others. Conservators or other interested persons may petition on behalf of elders unable to seek protection themselves.
Financial exploitation provisions in elder abuse orders may restrict access to the elder's finances, prevent property transfers, and address ongoing financial manipulation that other restraining order types don't specifically cover.