The rest of what we have written about Maryland. Every figure is quoted from Maryland’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Protective orders and restraining orders in Maryland
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 Maryland’s own statutes, not summarized.
See a different stateMaryland
Maryland runs three stages rather than the usual two. An interim protective order comes from a District Court commissioner and is available when the courts are closed. A temporary protective order comes from a judge and holds the position for about a week. A final protective order follows a hearing. All three are enforceable and all three carry criminal penalties if broken. Maryland also has a separate peace order for people who fall outside the list of those eligible for a protective order — neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances — so being outside the list does not mean being without a remedy.
Does this cover me?
Who is a "person eligible for relief"
Maryland is more specific than most states about who qualifies, and there are time thresholds built into the definitions that catch people out. Read this section carefully against your own dates.
The categories in s. 4-501(m) include a current or former spouse; a person related to the respondent by blood, marriage or adoption; a parent, stepparent, child or stepchild; a vulnerable adult; a person who has a child in common with the respondent; a person who has had a sexual relationship with the respondent within one year; and a person alleging rape or a sexual offense, or an attempt, within six months.
A cohabitant has its own definition and its own clock: a person who has had a sexual relationship with the respondent and resided with them in the home for at least 90 days within the past year.
If your relationship does not fit one of these, Maryland has a separate route — a peace order, obtained in the District Court, which covers people outside the eligible-for-relief list. Being told you are not eligible for a protective order is not the same as being told you have no remedy.
What you have to show
Maryland lists the acts that constitute abuse, and two of them are worth pointing out because they are relatively recent additions and are often assumed not to count.
Revenge porn is abuse in Maryland, by name, with its own criminal-code cross-reference. Distributing or threatening to distribute intimate images of someone is not a separate problem to be dealt with somewhere else — it is a ground for a protective order.
Stalking likewise, and false imprisonment — which covers being physically prevented from leaving a room, a house or a car. That is a common experience that people frequently do not realize has a name in the statute.
Can I get something today?
Three stages, not two
Most states have a temporary order and then a final one. Maryland has three, and the first exists precisely for the situation where the courthouse is shut.
An interim protective order is issued by a District Court commissioner, who is available when the courts are closed — nights, weekends, holidays. It expires at the end of the second business day after it is issued, or at the temporary protective order hearing, whichever comes first. It is a bridge, and it is meant to be a short one.
A temporary protective order is issued by a judge, generally lasts up to 7 days, and can be extended — for as long as six months where that is needed to get the respondent served, or for other good cause.
A final protective order follows a hearing at which both sides can appear.
The practical point: if something happens at 2am on a Saturday, you do not have to wait until Monday. Go to a District Court commissioner.
The order after a hearing
The standard, and how long it lasts
A preponderance — the ordinary civil standard. Maryland used to require the higher clear-and-convincing standard for these orders and no longer does, so older guidance on this point is out of date.
A final protective order generally runs for up to one year. It can run for up to two years where it is issued within a year of a previous order expiring and that previous order lasted at least six months.
And Maryland has a permanent protective order, though the gateway is narrow. The court must issue one where there was a prior protective order, the respondent was convicted and sentenced to at least five years for the abuse and has served at least twelve months, and the victim asks for it. If that describes your situation, you have to ask — the statute conditions it on the request.
What the judge can actually order
The statutory relief
Section 4-506 lists fourteen forms of relief. Beyond the no-contact and stay-away terms, they include ordering the respondent to vacate the home; custody and visitation arrangements; counseling; emergency family maintenance — that is, money; use and possession of a vehicle; and surrender of firearms.
The list ends with a catch-all: any other relief that the judge determines is necessary to protect a person eligible for relief. If there is something specific that would make you safer and it is not on the list, ask for it anyway.
Firearms
What Maryland’s own law says
Shall, not may — surrender is mandatory on a final protective order, not something the judge decides case by case. The statute does not attach an hours-based deadline of the kind Colorado and California use.
If they break it
What a violation is, and what it carries
Section 4-509 covers failure to comply with an interim, temporary or final order — all three stages carry criminal consequences, including the commissioner-issued interim order.
Worth knowing about Maryland
The things that are different here
Three stages, and a commissioner is available out of hours. An interim order can be obtained at night or at the weekend without waiting for a courthouse to open.
Revenge porn is named as abuse, with its own criminal-code reference.
False imprisonment counts — being stopped from leaving.
The eligibility definitions have clocks in them: 90 days of cohabitation within a year, a sexual relationship within a year, a sexual offense within six months. Check your dates.
The standard is preponderance, not clear and convincing. Maryland changed this, and older guidance is wrong.
A permanent order exists but you must request it, and only where the respondent was convicted, sentenced to five years or more, and has served at least twelve months.
A peace order is the alternative route if you fall outside the eligible-for-relief categories.
Firearms: what Maryland actually orders, and what it does not
People come to this question expecting an hour count — 24 hours, 48 hours, some deadline by which guns must be handed over. Maryland does not work that way, and it is worth understanding why before you rely on a number somebody quoted you.
The order itself is the surrender requirement
Maryland Family Law § 4-506 makes this mandatory, not discretionary, in a final protective order:
“the judge shall order the respondent to surrender to law enforcement authorities any firearm in the respondent’s possession, and to refrain from possession of any firearm, for the duration of the protective order.”
“Shall.” The judge has no discretion to leave firearms out of a final protective order. The prohibition runs for the whole life of the order, not merely until some review date.
What the statute does not contain is a stated deadline in hours. We looked for one and did not find one; the obligation attaches to the order, and the practical timing question — when and where you physically hand the firearm over — is handled by the terms the judge writes and by the law enforcement agency taking custody. If your order has a handover time written on it, that time governs.
What happens to the firearm afterwards — § 4-506.1
Maryland has a separate section governing custody and return. Law enforcement stores surrendered firearms in protective cases, and the respondent may retake possession at the expiration of a temporary or final protective order — subject to exceptions, of which the biggest is federal. A person subject to a qualifying order, or convicted of a qualifying domestic violence misdemeanour, is barred under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) regardless of what Maryland returns. An expired state order does not restore a federal disqualification that arose independently.
▸ See how this compares — all 50 states, side by side
How long a Maryland final protective order lasts
One year is the ordinary term
The default under § 4-506 is that relief in a final protective order is effective for the period stated in the order, not to exceed one year, on a finding “by a preponderance of the evidence that the alleged abuse has occurred” — or on the respondent’s consent.
Two years for a repeat
Subsection (j) raises the ceiling to two years where the abuse is a repeat. The conditions are precise:
“not to exceed 2 years if: (i) the court issues a final protective order under this section against a respondent on behalf of a person eligible for relief: 1. for an act of abuse committed within 1 year after the date that a prior final protective order issued against the same respondent on behalf of the same person eligible for relief expires; or 2. by consent of the respondent within 1 year after the date that a prior final protective order … expires; and (ii) the prior final protective order was issued for a period of at least 6 months.”
Note the two hinges: the new abuse must land within one year of the old order expiring, and the old order must have run at least six months. A short prior order does not unlock the two-year term.
Permanent orders exist, but the gate is narrow
Subsection (k) is Maryland’s permanent protective order. It is written as a shall — if the conditions are met the court must issue it — but the conditions require a serious criminal conviction, not just repeated abuse:
“(i) an interim, temporary, or final protective order has been issued under this subtitle against the individual; (ii) 1. the individual was convicted and sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of at least 5 years for the act of abuse that led to the issuance of the … order and the individual has served at least 12 months of the sentence; or 2. A. during the term of the … order, the individual committed an act of abuse against the person eligible for relief; and B. the individual was convicted and sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment of at least 5 years for the act and has served at least 12 months of the sentence; and (iii) the victim … requests the issuance of a permanent protective order.”
Three things to take from that. First, the sentence threshold is five years imposed, with twelve months served — both, not either. Second, the second pathway covers abuse committed during an existing order, which is the fact pattern most likely to apply. Third, and easily missed: the permanent order does not happen automatically. You have to ask for it. Clause (iii) makes your request a condition of issuance, so if a respondent is serving a long sentence for abusing you, this is a step to raise with the State’s Attorney or a victim advocate rather than waiting for the court to act on its own.
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: Md. Code, Family Law s. 4-501, "Definitions." Interim protective orders at s. 4-504.1. Temporary protective orders at s. 4-505. Protective orders at s. 4-506. Penalties at s. 4-509. 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 Maryland. 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 Maryland presumes about custody, and the emergency jurisdiction that exists when someone has to leave the state.