Protective orders and restraining orders in Georgia

Who can ask for one

This list is the practical, current statement of who can get a family violence protective order in Georgia, and it comes from the official state court form every petitioner actually fills out, not from a summary. But we want to be honest about its limits: it is the form's own checklist, not a word-for-word transcription of O.C.G.A. section 19-13-1 itself. We tried repeatedly to reach the bare text of 19-13-1 — the definition of "family violence" and the list of qualifying relationships in the statute's own words, including whatever acts (battery, assault, stalking, criminal damage to property, and similar) count as "family violence" — on every official Georgia source available to us, and could not. See the gaps note at the bottom of this page. Anyone dating a partner they have never lived with and do not share a child with does not fit these seven categories; Georgia created a separate Dating Violence Protective Order chapter (19-13A) in 2022 specifically for that situation, and a person with no relationship to the respondent at all uses the stalking protective order described further down this page instead.

ex parte protective order (the official state form is titled "Family Violence Ex Parte Protective Order," form SC-15) — before any hearing

This is the order a court can make without the other person present. It is short by design: it holds until a hearing, and the hearing is where the longer order is decided.

We can confirm that an ex parte order exists and is a real, currently used form (form SC-15, published by the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority), and that it cites O.C.G.A. sections 19-13-1 et seq., 19-13-4(d), 19-13-6, 19-13-3, and 19-13-53 as its statutory basis, along with the federal Violence Against Women Act full-faith-and-credit provision, 18 U.S.C. section 2265(a). What we could not confirm from an official source is the statute's own wording for the legal standard a petitioner must meet to get an ex parte order, or a specific number of days the order lasts before the full hearing must happen. Georgia's own general information page, georgia.gov, states in plain language (not statutory text) that a full hearing is "generally scheduled within 30 days after the petition is filed," but we could not verify a 30-day figure against the statute itself, so we are not publishing it as a confirmed number. The stalking protective order's parallel statute, O.C.G.A. 16-5-94(c), which we did reach on an official source, says only that "the court may order such temporary relief ex parte as it deems necessary to protect the petitioner," again without a stated number of days.

How long it lasts, and whether it can be extended

Yes — Georgia is one of the states that allows a permanent family violence protective order. This is confirmed two ways: first, directly from the statute's own text, reached through a document hosted on the Georgia Secretary of State's own website (sos.ga.gov), quoted above. Second, independently, the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority (GSCCCA), the state authority that publishes the standard statewide court forms, maintains a form literally titled "Family Violence Three Year / Permanent Protective Order" (form SC-22), which states on its face: "This Order and the Order issued ______________________, 20_____ shall be permanent pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 19-13-4 (c) and have NO expiration date." So Georgia's structure is: an order starts at up to one year, and can later be converted, after a motion, notice, and a hearing, to a three-year order or to a permanent one with no end date. We could not confirm the evidentiary standard (for example, preponderance of the evidence) that applies at the hearing for either the original order or a conversion to a longer or permanent one; no official source we reached stated it. We also found, in the same subsection (a) of 19-13-4 that lists the available relief, a limit on mutual orders: the court cannot issue an order against both parties for certain kinds of relief (the items numbered (1), (2), (5), (9), and (11) in the relief list below) unless the respondent has filed a verified counter-petition, with notice at least three days (excluding weekends and legal holidays) before the hearing, satisfying the requirements of O.C.G.A. 19-13-3.

The statutory list

What Georgia’s own law says

This matches what the research request expected: Georgia's own Family Violence Act, as far as we were able to read it, does not itself create a state-law firearms surrender or relinquishment procedure the way some other states' statutes do — there is no Georgia equivalent of a sheriff-collection process, a third-party-safekeeping provision, or a court-ordered relinquishment deadline written into the state code sections we reached. What the official court order forms do is restate the existing federal restriction: once a qualifying protective order is issued after a hearing, 18 U.S.C. section 922(g)(8) already makes it a federal crime for the respondent to possess a firearm, and Georgia's own order forms simply flag that federal rule to the respondent rather than adding a state mechanism on top of it. We could not review O.C.G.A. 19-13-1 through 19-13-3, 19-13-5, or 19-13-6 directly, so we cannot rule out a firearms provision existing somewhere else in the chapter that we simply did not reach; what we can say is that it is not in the operative relief-and-duration section, 19-13-4, which is the section that would ordinarily carry it.

Fees

That sentence is the state's own plain-language guidance, not a quotation from the statute itself. We looked for a subsection of O.C.G.A. 19-13-3 (the petition and procedure section, where a no-fee rule would ordinarily be codified) that says this in the code's own words, and could not reach the text of that section on any official source, so we cannot show the underlying statutory sentence. None of the official court forms we reviewed (the petition or any of the order forms) mention a filing fee in either direction.

What a violation is, and what it carries

Three things about Georgia are easy to get wrong. First, and most important: Georgia does allow a permanent family violence protective order. The statute (O.C.G.A. 19-13-4(c)) starts every order at up to one year, but lets a court convert it, after a motion, notice to the respondent, and a hearing, to a three-year order or to one with no expiration date at all — confirmed both from the statute's own wording and from the existence of the state's own standard court form named "Family Violence Three Year / Permanent Protective Order." Second, on firearms: nothing we could read in the operative relief statute, 19-13-4, creates a Georgia-specific firearm relinquishment, surrender, or registry procedure. The only firearms language anywhere in the official materials we reached is the state court forms reminding the respondent of the existing federal prohibition, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8), once a qualifying order is entered — Georgia is not adding a state enforcement mechanism on top of that federal rule, at least not in the section that would normally carry one. Third, Georgia splits protection from abuse across three separate statutes rather than one: the Family Violence Act (Title 19, Chapter 13) for the specific relationships listed above, a Dating Violence Protective Order chapter (Title 19, Chapter 13A) added in 2022 for dating partners who do not fit that list, and a Stalking Protective Order (Title 16, Chapter 5, Article 7, principally 16-5-94) for anyone alleging stalking regardless of relationship. A reader whose situation does not fit the family violence relationship list is not out of options in Georgia; they are simply reading the wrong chapter.

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.