More on Indiana’s Civil Protection Order Act
A thoughtful comment in response to my previous post on domestic protection orders brings out an aspect of these orders that I do not think most of the public is aware of.:
These orders can issue without notice to the person to be restrained and without a hearing in most circumstances. A protective order can issue at the option of the trial court based solely on the statements sworn out by the petitioner in the petition. Only if specific forms of relief are requested (like kicking someone out of their home, possession of property, or taking away the right to bear firearms) is a hearing required.
If a no-notice/no-hearing order (we call them “ex parte”) is issued, the recipient of the order has 30 days after service to request a hearing on the order. Many of us find this type of procedure to be prone to abuse. All of the local judges in Wayne County, like the commenter on my prior post, after reading over that provision, decided to set all these petitions for hearing, regardless of whether one is requested or not, and I think this is the right approach. This is not universal, though, and in some venues, these order just go out, to be entered into the Indiana Data and Communication System (IDACS), raising red flags on the recipient all over the state, if not the nation.
Many of the recipients of these orders do not have the sophistication to know what they need to do to respond. I have talked to many people who come into the office with one of these orders issued against them several month previously, and they have not seen their kids, and have no legal means to make contact with the custodial parent to try to see their kids. The protective order statute permits us to go in and seek a modification to set up access, but this is a process, we have to get on the court’s calendar and go through a hearing. In the meantime, the parent has been without access with their kids for months, endangering a sometimes already endangered parental relationship.
