Protective orders and restraining orders in Alabama

Permanent by default

Alabama does something only a handful of states do, and it does it as the default rather than as an exception you have to argue for.

Read that again, because it inverts what nearly every other state does. An Alabama final protection order does not run for a year, or two, or five. It is permanent from the moment it is made, unless the court says otherwise or a later order changes it.

There is no renewal date to diary and no window to miss. On this site only New Jersey, Colorado and Alabama put a protected person in that position without her having to ask for it.

The words "unless otherwise specified" still matter. A court can put an end date on the order. So when the order is made, read what it actually says about duration — and if it carries an expiry date, that is a departure from the default and worth raising at the time rather than discovering later.

The ex parte standard

That is a plainer test than the immediate-and-present-danger formulations several states use. A judge can act without notice or hearing where abuse appears from the petition.

A final protection order follows after notice under the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure and a hearing.

The statutory relief

An Alabama order can enjoin abuse and harassment, impose a 300-foot distance requirement from your residence, school or workplace, award temporary custody, remove the defendant from the residence, give you possession of a vehicle and personal property, and prohibit the defendant from transferring or disposing of property.

A final order can go further: specifying visitation with safety conditions, attorney’s fees, possession of the residence, and temporary support payments.

The property-disposal provision is worth asking about if there is any risk of assets being moved or sold while things are unresolved.

What counts as abuse — a list of crimes

Alabama does not apply a general test of abuse. Like New Jersey, it defines abuse by pointing at a list of criminal offenses, and the list is long. Section 30-5-2 includes:

Arson. Assault. Attempt. Child abuse, torture, willful abuse of a child, aggravated child abuse and chemical endangerment. Criminal coercion. Criminal trespass. Harassment. Kidnapping. Menacing. Reckless endangerment. Sexual offenses. Stalking. Theft. Unlawful imprisonment.

Several of those cover conduct people do not associate with a protection order. Theft — taking your things. Criminal trespass — coming into your home or onto your property. Menacing and reckless endangerment, neither of which requires you to have been touched. Unlawful imprisonment — being stopped from leaving.

And then the provision that keeps the list from being a ceiling:

Anything that could be punished as a criminal act. If what is being done to you is a crime, it is abuse for the purposes of an Alabama protection order, whether or not it appears on the list.

Standing to petition is dealt with at s. 30-5-5, and covers people connected by marriage, a child in common, a dating relationship, household membership, family relationship, or a parent-child or stepparent-stepchild connection.

The section most guidance still cites was repealed

A housekeeping point that matters, because it appears in a good deal of published material about Alabama. Section 30-5-9, the penalties section of the Protection From Abuse Act, was repealed by Act 2010-538 with effect from 1 July 2010. If a guide cites 30-5-9 for what a violation carries, it is roughly a decade and a half out of date.

The offense now lives in the criminal code, in the Domestic Violence Protection Order Enforcement Act:

Note the two limbs. Doing something the order prohibits, and willfully failing to do something the order requires. An order that tells him to hand something over or to stay away from a place is broken by inaction as much as by action.

A first violation is a Class A misdemeanor.

On a second conviction there is a mandatory minimum of 30 days’ imprisonment which cannot be suspended, in addition to any other penalty or fine.

A third or subsequent violation is a Class C felony.

The court must also impose a $50 fine paid to the Domestic Violence Trust Fund on every conviction.

The escalation is worth understanding in advance, because it depends on convictions rather than incidents. A violation that is never reported never counts toward the second or third.

Standing — Ala. Code § 30-5-5(a)

“(1) A person who is at least 18 years old or is otherwise emancipated and is the victim of abuse, as defined in Section 30-5-2, or has reasonable cause to believe he or she is in imminent danger of becoming the victim of any act of abuse.”

Read the second half of that sentence. You do not have to have been abused yet. Reasonable cause to believe you are in imminent danger of it is standing in its own right. That matters if you are trying to leave before something happens rather than after.

“(2) A parent, legal guardian, next friend, court-appointed guardian ad litem, or the State Department of Human Resources may petition for relief on behalf of the following: a. A minor child. b. Any person prevented by physical or mental incapacity from seeking a protection order.”

Note “next friend” — you do not have to be a parent or a formal guardian to file for a child or for an adult who cannot file for themselves.

Three business days, then ten — § 30-5-6

The ten days runs from service, not from filing. And because the ex parte order lasts “until the final hearing date,” a continuance for service does not leave you exposed — subsection (c) lets the court make or extend the temporary order as reasonably necessary.

The ex parte standard is “good cause shown”, to protect against abuse “or the immediate and present danger of abuse.” Under § 30-5-7 the court may issue an ex parte order “without notice or hearing, immediately”, and may make a final order after notice “whether or not the defendant appears.” Their non-attendance does not stop you getting a final order.

The prohibition — Ala. Code § 13A-11-72(a)(1)

It sits in the criminal code, among the general firearms disqualifications:

“No person who has been convicted in this state or elsewhere of committing or attempting to commit a crime of violence, misdemeanor offense of domestic violence, violent offense as listed in Section 12-25-32(15), anyone who is subject to a valid protection order for domestic abuse, or anyone of unsound mind shall own a firearm or have one in his or her possession or under his or her control.”

Three things follow, and all of them are good news:

• It covers owning, possessing and controlling — not just carrying.
• It is mandatory and automatic. It attaches by operation of law the moment a qualifying order issues. No judge has to tick a box, and you do not have to ask.
• Violation is a Class C felony under § 13A-11-72(a)(2) — a state charge, quite apart from the federal one.

But read the definition of “valid protection order” carefully

Section 13A-11-72(h)(8) defines the term, and it tracks the federal standard almost word for word. The order must have been “issued after a hearing of which the person received actual notice and at which the person had an opportunity to participate”, and must either restrain them from harassing, stalking or threatening a qualified person or child “and … include a finding that the person represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of that person, or “by its terms, explicitly prohibit the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” reasonably expected to cause bodily injury.

So the ban is post-hearing only. An ex parte order under § 30-5-7(b) does not trigger it, because there has been no hearing. If you are holding a temporary Alabama order, § 13A-11-72 does not yet apply to the person it restrains — and neither does the federal rule, for the same reason. That window between the ex parte order and the final hearing is the one to be most careful in.

The practical step is the same one the federal statute rewards: ask the judge for an express finding that the respondent represents a credible threat to your physical safety, and to write it into the final order. That single sentence engages both the Alabama felony and the federal prohibition.

What Alabama still does not have

There is no surrender or relinquishment procedure anywhere in Alabama law. No deadline, no recipient, no receipt, no certification. Nobody is required to hand anything over and nobody checks. The ban is enforced only by prosecution after the fact, if possession is discovered.

Nor is there a notification requirement — Alabama does not oblige the court to tell the respondent they have just become a prohibited person.

So the shape of it is: a strong prohibition, a serious penalty, and no machinery. Which makes the same three things matter as everywhere else — get a final order made after a hearing, get the credible-threat finding written into it, and tell law enforcement what firearms exist and where they are kept.

An order from one state works in all of them

This is federal law and it does not change at a state line. An order issued by one state, tribe or territory must be enforced by every other as if that state had issued it. And you do not have to register it in the new state first — registration is optional, not a precondition to enforcement.

The same section also says the enforcing state must not tell the restrained person that the order has been registered there unless the protected person asks it to, and must not publish anything online that would be likely to reveal the protected person’s identity or location.