Served with a protection order in Washington

Somebody handed you an envelope, or a deputy did, and somewhere inside it is a date. Find the date first.

What you were served with is almost certainly a temporary order — entered after hearing only one side — and it holds until the end of the hearing on that date. If the hearing is continued, the court reissues it rather than letting it lapse.

The second thing to find is the heading at the top of the form, because most of what follows depends on which kind of order this is.

Which kind of order is it?

Washington folded its civil protection orders into a single chapter in 2022, and there are six: domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, antiharassment, vulnerable adult, and extreme risk.

Three of them behave in ways worth knowing before you read any further. The domestic violence order reaches an intimate partner or a family or household member. Antiharassment turns on the conduct rather than the relationship, so it can reach a neighbor, a coworker or a relative alike. The extreme risk order is about firearms alone, and the statute carves it out of most of the rules below.

Two more orders sit outside the chapter entirely — a no-contact order from a criminal case, a restraining order from a divorce or parentage case. They read alike and they are enforced alike.

The dates that matter

What	When
The hearing	No later than 14 days from the day the petition was filed, unless a court extends it for good cause
Being served	Not less than 5 judicial days before the hearing
Surrendering firearms, if you are at the hearing	That day
Surrendering firearms, if you were served another way	Within 24 hours of service
Filing proof of surrender, in a civil case	Within 24 hours
Asking to modify or terminate the order	Once in 12 months
The petitioner asking to renew it	In the 90 days before it expires

How you get served

Personal service is required in four kinds of case, and there law enforcement makes it:

Where firearms must be surrendered
Where custody of a child changes hands
Where you would be put out of a shared residence
Where you are in custody

Elsewhere any adult who is not a party may serve you, or service can be electronic, then by mail, and eventually by publication.

Being hard to find does not run the clock out. The court can reissue the temporary order to allow more time.

What happens if you do not appear?

The court can decide it without you, on a preponderance of the evidence — a lower bar than anything in a criminal courtroom.

Other than an antiharassment order, a full order cannot be granted for less than a year unless the petitioner asks for a shorter period, and it can be permanent; permanent orders are written to expire ninety-nine years from issuance. The mandatory form warns that the court may add weapons restrictions even if nobody requested them.

One piece is capped. Where the order restrains you from contacting your own minor children, that restraint is limited to a year at a time — though that cap does not reach a restraining order out of a family law case.

What the hearing actually looks like

These hearings are usually decided on paper. Live testimony from anyone other than the two parties is not permitted unless the court finds it necessary and material, so your written declaration is often the whole of your case.

Some arguments that feel strong are foreclosed by statute. A petition cannot be denied because the conduct was never reported to police, because another order exists or a criminal case is pending, because time has passed, or because you have moved away.

You can ask for a continuance to find a lawyer, though the statute tells courts to lean against delay.

There is no appointed attorney for you. The chapter provides one for the petitioner when the respondent has counsel, and nothing running the other way.

If the order includes firearms

That is the part that moves fastest. Where the court finds a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, a protected person or a child, or where the order forbids the use of physical force, surrender is not discretionary.

If you are at the hearing, you surrender that day. If you were served some other way, within twenty-four hours of service.

Everything goes to the local law enforcement agency named in the order, and in a civil case proof of surrender is filed with the court within twenty-four hours. Courts hold hearings to check that it happened.

What counts as a violation?

The no-contact terms hold regardless of what the protected person does. The form puts it plainly.

You can be arrested even if the protected person invites or allows the contact. Only the court can change the terms.

A willful violation by someone who knows of the order is a gross misdemeanor. On a domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or vulnerable adult order it rises to a class C felony in three situations:

Where the violation is an assault short of first or second degree
Where the conduct is reckless and creates a substantial risk of death or serious injury
Where you already have two convictions for violating orders

The antiharassment statute has no assault tier. The extreme risk one turns felony only on two or more previous convictions.

Can the order be changed later?

Undoing an order later is harder than being heard now.

On most orders you can move to modify or terminate once in twelve months, and you must prove a substantial change in circumstances such that you will not resume the conduct. The petitioner need not show she is still afraid, and the court may not rest on the fact that time has passed without a violation.

If the order has an expiration date, she can move to renew it in the ninety days before, and the burden there is yours again.

Which is the long way of saying that the date on the papers is the cheapest hearing you will get. Read the petition, write the response, and be there.