The rest of what we have written about North Dakota. Every figure is quoted from North Dakota’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Protective orders and restraining orders in North Dakota
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 North Dakota’s own statutes, not summarized.
See a different stateNorth Dakota
North Dakota rewrote this area of law in 2025. The provisions most guides still cite were repealed, and protection orders now sit in a new chapter of the Century Code, 14-07.7, "Civil Protection Orders". That chapter brings three previously separate orders — disorderly conduct, domestic violence, and sexual assault — into one scheme. The citation change is dealt with first below, because working from the old sections is the most likely way to go wrong here.
Before anything else
North Dakota rewrote this law in 2025
If you look up North Dakota protection orders, most of what you will find cites chapter 14-07.1 of the Century Code, and in particular ss. 14-07.1-02 and 14-07.1-06. Those sections have been repealed.
They were repealed by chapter 145 of the 2025 Session Laws, and the whole area now sits in a new chapter: chapter 14-07.7, Civil Protection Orders. Looking up the old sections today returns nothing but a note recording the repeal.
This is recent enough that a great deal of published guidance has not caught up. If something you are reading cites 14-07.1-02 or 14-07.1-06, it predates the rewrite — and you should assume anything else in it about North Dakota procedure may also be out of date. The current citations are in 14-07.7.
Does this cover me?
One chapter, three different orders
The new chapter folds three previously separate orders into a single scheme, and you can be covered by any of them:
— a disorderly conduct restraining order, for intrusive or unwanted acts affecting your safety or privacy;
— a domestic violence protection order, for physical harm, stalking, compelled sexual activity, assault, or the fear of those things; and
— a sexual assault restraining order, for non-consensual offenses involving a sexual act or conduct.
The relationships covered by the domestic violence route are spouses, family members, former spouses, dating partners, people who live together, people who share a child — and, notably, others where the court determines the relationship is sufficient. That last category is open-ended, and it is the reason not to assume you are outside the scheme because your situation does not match a label.
A parent or guardian may petition for a minor, and a minor of sufficient competence may petition on their own behalf.
Can I get something today?
Reasonable grounds — and an order with no gap in it
The standard for a temporary order is reasonable grounds to believe the respondent engaged in the relevant conduct. That is a lower bar than the immediate-danger tests several states use.
And the duration provision is quietly excellent. A temporary domestic violence order remains in effect until a protection order issued under s. 14-07.7-07 is served.
Read what that does. The temporary order does not expire on a fixed date and leave you unprotected while the paperwork catches up. It runs until the longer order has actually been served. There is no gap between the two.
The order after a hearing
The standard, the two-year limit, and firearms
For a domestic violence protection order, the court asks whether the relationship "is sufficient to warrant protection" and whether there has been a "showing of actual or imminent domestic violence". Note imminent: nothing has to have happened yet.
For the disorderly conduct and sexual assault orders, relief may not exceed two years.
The relief available across the chapter includes restraining contact and conduct; excluding the respondent from your residence or workplace; temporary custody and parenting time; requiring a domestic violence assessment or program; ordering support and attorney’s fees; awarding use of personal property; and firearms:
That relief is conditional: the court must have probable cause to believe the respondent is likely to use the weapon in violence. So it is not automatic, and it is not granted on a form. If there are weapons, the petition needs to say so and say why they worry you.
If they break it
What a violation carries
Three things in one short provision. A first violation is a class A misdemeanour. The same violation is also contempt of court, which is a separate route running through the court that made the order. And after a conviction, a second or subsequent violation is a class C felony.
Note the phrase "under this chapter". The escalation counts violations across all three order types in the new chapter, not only violations of the same order.
How long does a North Dakota protection order last?
This is the question the 2025 rewrite answers by silence, and the silence is the answer. North Dakota put a hard ceiling on two of the three orders in chapter 14-07.7 and deliberately left no ceiling on the third.
Two of the three orders are capped at two years
“Relief granted by the restraining order may not exceed two years.”
“The relief granted by the sexual assault restraining order may not exceed two years.”
The domestic violence protection order has no stated ceiling
Section 14-07.7-07, which is the section that creates the domestic violence protection order, lists what the court may order and says nothing at all about how long it lasts. The only duration rule that touches it is the general one, at § 14-07.7-03(3):
“An order entered under this chapter expires on the expiration date provided in the order at eleven fifty-nine p.m. central standard time.”
Read those three provisions together and the structure is plain. The legislature knew how to write a two-year cap — it wrote one twice, in the sections immediately either side. It did not write one for the domestic violence protection order. So the term of your order is whatever date the judge puts on its face, and there is no statutory maximum the judge has to stay under.
What this means in practice: read the expiration date on your own order. It is the only number that governs you. Do not assume it is one year because that is what a website said, and do not assume it is two because that is what the neighboring sections say.
Changing an order before it expires
There is no separate renewal or extension section in the chapter. What there is instead is a general amendment power in § 14-07.7-03:
“The court may amend an order following a motion filed by either party.”
Either party. That cuts both ways — it is the route by which you ask for more time or more protection, and it is also the route by which the respondent asks to have terms loosened. Unlike Colorado, North Dakota sets no waiting period before the restrained party may file such a motion, so the amendment door is open from the day the order issues.
▸ 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: N.D.C.C. ch. 14-07.7, "Civil Protection Orders." Definitions at s. 14-07.7-01. Petitions at s. 14-07.7-02. Temporary and full disorderly conduct orders at ss. 14-07.7-04 and 14-07.7-05. Temporary and full domestic violence protection orders at ss. 14-07.7-06 and 14-07.7-07. Sexual assault restraining orders at ss. 14-07.7-08 and 14-07.7-09. Penalty at s. 14-07.7-17. S.L. 2025, ch. 145, s. 17 repealed the former protection order provisions of ch. 14-07.1 — ss. 14-07.1-02, -03, -03.1, -04, -05, -05.1, -06, -07 and -08. Chapter 14-07.1 itself still exists: s. 14-07.1-01 (definitions), -02.1, -08.1, -10, -11 (warrantless arrest), -12, -14 and -15 to -20 remain in force. Ch. 14-07.7 took effect 1 January 2026; s. 14-07.7-20 governs the status of orders issued before that date. Checked 29 Aug 2026.
How we checked this page
Every quotation on this page was read in the source named in the Authority line above, not taken from a summary or another website. On this date we also re-checked every section cited for repeal, renumbering or amendment since 2024 — the sweep that caught North Dakota’s chapter being repealed and replaced, and Nebraska’s moving to an entirely new title.
One thing we could not do, and we would rather say so:
- The 2025 rewrite generally — chapter 14-07.7 is new, and case law interpreting it will be thin for some time. Where a point matters, ask an advocate rather than relying on older North Dakota material, which is now describing a repealed scheme. If a source is still citing chapter 14-07.1, it is out of date.
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 North Dakota presumes about custody, and the emergency jurisdiction that exists when someone has to leave the state.