Protective orders in Iowa.
Who can ask for one, what you have to show, what a judge can order, what it costs, and what happens if it is broken — quoted from Iowa’s own statutes, not summarized.
See a different stateIowa
Iowa issues protective orders under chapter 236 of the Code, the domestic abuse chapter. A temporary order can be made without the other person present, and a protective order follows a hearing. The order runs for up to a year — but Iowa places no limit at all on how many times it can be extended, which is the provision worth knowing about and is dealt with first below.
The order after a hearing
One year — but the extensions are unlimited
Iowa’s headline number is modest, and the provision underneath it is not.
One year. But on a petition and a hearing the court may extend it where it finds that the defendant continues to pose a threat to the safety of the victim, persons residing with the victim, or members of the victim’s immediate family. And then:
No limit. An Iowa order is renewable indefinitely, one year at a time, for as long as the threat lasts. That is a different proposition from a state that lets you renew once or twice.
Note also what the extension test is not. It does not ask whether the defendant has done something new during the year. It asks whether he continues to pose a threat — and it expressly extends to people living with you and to your immediate family, so the risk to them counts as well as the risk to you.
The practical instruction: put the expiry date in your calendar the day the order is made, and file the petition to extend before it lapses rather than after.
What the judge can actually order
The statutory relief
Iowa’s list of relief is broad and includes several things people do not think to request.
The court may order that the abuse cease; impose firearm restrictions; award possession of the residence or order alternate housing; make stay-away orders covering the residence, school and place of employment; make temporary custody or visitation orders, with the safety of the victim and any children as the primary consideration; order financial support; and make orders about the custody and protection of pets and companion animals.
The court may also order that the plaintiff, the defendant and the children of the household receive professional counseling. Note the difference between that and being ordered into a room together — counseling here is individual provision, not mediation.
Two of these are worth asking for expressly. Alternate housing is a live option, not merely possession of the existing home. And the companion animal provision means a court can decide who keeps the pet, which removes one of the most common reasons people stay.
Does this cover me?
Assault, plus one of five circumstances
Iowa builds its definition in two layers. There must be an assault as defined in s. 708.1, and it must happen in one of five listed circumstances. Both layers have to be satisfied.
Paragraphs (d) and (e) are the ones to read against your own calendar, because both carry a one-year clock. If you no longer live together, (d) applies where you did live together within the past year. And (e) covers a past intimate relationship where there has been contact within the past year of the assault — note that it is the contact, not the relationship, that has to be recent.
If they break it
Contempt, a criminal offense, and seven days in jail
Iowa runs violations down two tracks at once, and attaches a mandatory minimum to the serious ones.
A violation is punishable by summary contempt proceedings. A hearing on a rule to show cause is held not less than five and not more than fifteen days after it is issued.
Where the violation relates to domestic abuse assault or assault on an older individual, it is also a public offense, punishable as a simple misdemeanour — so the same conduct can be dealt with as contempt or prosecuted.
And then the provision that gives Iowa’s enforcement its teeth:
Seven days, served on consecutive days, with no portion deferred or suspended. And the court cannot impose a fine in lieu of that minimum — a fine may only be added to it, never substituted for it.
That is a deliberate design. In many states a first violation produces a fine and nothing else, which teaches the person subject to the order that the order is negotiable. Iowa removed that option.
One more provision worth claiming: for violations of a civil protective order, the court may order the defendant to pay your attorney’s fees and court costs.
The Iowa timetable, and the firearms rule that lives in another chapter
Five to fifteen days — Iowa Code § 236.4(1)
“Not less than five and not more than fifteen days after commencing a proceeding and upon notice to the other party, a hearing shall be held at which the plaintiff must prove the allegation of domestic abuse by a preponderance of the evidence.”
Note the floor as well as the ceiling. Five days is a minimum, and it exists so that neither side is ambushed. Fifteen is the outer limit.
The temporary order — § 236.4(2)
The court may enter any temporary order it deems necessary “upon good cause shown in an ex parte proceeding”, and the statute defines the term for you: “Present danger of domestic abuse to the plaintiff constitutes good cause for purposes of this subsection.”
Two provisions in the same section are worth knowing. If a hearing is continued, “the court may make or extend any temporary order” — ask for that expressly if your date moves. And “Upon application of a party, the court shall issue subpoenas requiring attendance and testimony of witnesses and production of papers.” If a witness will not come voluntarily, or you need records somebody else holds, you are entitled to a subpoena and it costs nothing to ask.
Firearms: Iowa has a real one, but it is at § 724.26
Chapter 236 only points at it. § 236.5(1)(b)(2) lets the court order “That the defendant not knowingly possess, ship, transport, or receive firearms, offensive weapons, and ammunition in violation of section 724.26, subsection 2.” And a temporary order must warn that this is coming: it “shall specifically include notice that the person may be required to relinquish all firearms, offensive weapons, and ammunition upon the issuance of a permanent order.”
The prohibition itself, at § 724.26(2)(a), is tied to the federal standard: a person subject to an order under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), or convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence under § 922(g)(9), who knowingly possesses a firearm, offensive weapon or ammunition “is guilty of a class ‘D’ felony.” Iowa turns the federal rule into a state felony.
The removal machinery is at § 724.26(4). Where the court finds the person in possession, it “shall order that such firearm, offensive weapon, or ammunition be sold or transferred by a date certain to the custody of a qualified person in this state, as determined by the court” — and if no qualified person can be identified, to the county sheriff or a designated local agency for safekeeping, with the respondent assessed “the reasonable cost of storing” them.
“By a date certain.” Iowa does not fix a number of hours — the judge sets the date. That means the deadline is something you can ask about at the hearing. Ask for it to be short and for it to be written on the order. Under subsection (5) the court must enter the compliance date into the Iowa criminal justice information system, so it is a date the system tracks.
On return: where a firearm went to a qualified person and the order is no longer in effect, it “shall be returned … within five days of that person’s request.”
▸ See how this compares — all 50 states, side by side
The part that is the same in every state
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.
The federal firearms rule needs a hearing first
This is the single most misunderstood point in the whole subject, and it cuts against what most people assume. The federal prohibition at 18 U.S.C. s. 922(g)(8) reaches a person subject to an order only where three things are true: the order was made after a hearing of which they had actual notice and at which they had a chance to take part; it restrains them in relation to an intimate partner or that partner’s child; and it either carries a credible-threat finding or expressly forbids the use of force.
So an emergency or ex parte order does not trigger the federal prohibition on its own — there has been no hearing yet. State law may go further, and many states do, which is why the state rule is set out on this page separately. In United States v. Rahimi (2024) the Supreme Court upheld s. 922(g)(8), holding that “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
This rule is narrower than it looks, and the detail matters. Who counts as an “intimate partner” is a defined term that excludes dating partners you never lived with; the two halves of the third condition are not equally settled after Rahimi; and there is a separate federal route based on convictions rather than orders, which does reach dating partners. We set all of it out, quoted from the United States Code, on one page: Guns and protection orders — the federal rule.
How does this state compare? Ten states do nothing at all about firearms on a protection order; fourteen prohibit possession but give the court no way to collect them. All fifty side by side: which states actually take the guns.
You should not be charged for this — in any state
This is settled, and it is worth knowing before you walk into a courthouse. Under 34 U.S.C. s. 10450, a state applying for STOP grant funding must certify to the Attorney General that its "laws, policies, and practices do not require" a victim to bear the costs associated with the filing, issuance, registration, modification, enforcement, dismissal, withdrawal or service of a protection order or a petition for one — nor the costs of filing criminal charges, or of warrants and witness subpoenas. A jurisdiction that does charge has its funds withheld and redistributed to the states that do not.
Every state receives STOP funding and every state has certified compliance. The practical consequence, in the words of the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit, is that victims "should not be required to pay such costs in any state". That covers having the papers served on the other person, which is the charge people are most often asked for.
Two honest qualifications. The provision does not stop a court charging the respondent — many states order costs against them, and that is permitted. And it is a funding condition rather than a direct federal ban, so what a clerk does on a given day can still be wrong. If you are asked to pay a fee for any of the things listed above, you can say that your state has certified under 34 U.S.C. s. 10450 that it does not charge for them. Advocates can also raise it with the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit on 1-800-903-0111, prompt 2.
Where this state’s own statute says so expressly, that is quoted above.
Authority: Iowa Code ch. 236, "Domestic Abuse." Definitions at s. 236.2. Temporary orders at s. 236.4. Disposition, relief, duration and extension at s. 236.5. Violation of a no-contact order or protective order, contempt and simple misdemeanor penalties, at s. 664A.7. Checked 29 Aug 2026.
How we checked this page
Every quotation above was read in the source named in the Authority line, not taken from a summary or another website. Where a source would not open, we say so at the point we relied on something else.
On this date we also re-checked every section cited above for repeal, renumbering or amendment since 2024. That sweep is not decorative: it is what caught North Dakota’s protection order chapter being repealed and replaced, Nebraska’s moving to an entirely new title, and a dozen 2025 and 2026 amendments that most published guidance has not yet picked up.
Nothing is outstanding on the main questions for Iowa. What we cannot promise is that nothing has changed since this date. Quote the words with confidence; check a section number before you put it in a filing. And if anything here does not match what a clerk or judge tells you, the court is right and we are wrong — tell us and we will fix it.
We keep a public record of every time we have got the law wrong on these pages, what caused it, and how long it was live: where we were wrong.
If there are children
What Iowa presumes about custody, and the emergency jurisdiction that exists when someone has to leave the state.