Protective orders and restraining orders in Ohio

Who can ask for one

Ohio covers two separate groups under one statute. A person is protected either because of a listed family-or-household relationship with the person harming them (residing or having resided together as a spouse, former spouse, common-law or cohabiting partner, parent, child, foster parent, or a relative by blood or marriage of any of those people, or sharing a child in common), or, since the definition was broadened, because of a dating relationship of a romantic or intimate nature, whether or not the couple ever lived together — a casual acquaintance or ordinary business or social contact does not count. Who may sign and file the petition is narrower than in some states: the person seeking protection on their own behalf, or a parent or adult household member filing on behalf of another family or household member. There is no separate provision here for a guardian ad litem or a guardian of an incompetent adult filing, unlike Pennsylvania's statute.

What you have to show

ex parte order (temporary protection order pending the full hearing) — 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.

Requesting an ex parte order gets a same-day hearing in front of the judge (no notice to the other person beforehand). The court can enter it on a finding of "good cause," and the statute defines immediate and present danger of domestic violence as good cause, giving examples: a threat of bodily harm, a threat of a sexually oriented offense, or a prior conviction, guilty plea, or delinquency adjudication for an act of domestic violence against that same person. How long the temporary order lasts is tied to when the full hearing is set, not a fixed number of days on its own: if the ex parte order excludes the respondent from the residence (division (E)(1)(b) or (c)), the full hearing must be set within seven court days; for any other type of order under division (E), the full hearing must be set within ten court days. The temporary order survives even if the respondent could not be served before that hearing date, or if the court grants a continuance for the reasons the statute lists (no service yet, the parties agree, a party needs time to get a lawyer, or other good cause).

How long it lasts, and whether it can be extended

Ohio's civil protection order has a hard statutory ceiling of five years per order (or, for a respondent who was a minor when the order issued, until they turn nineteen), set by the court at a specific end date rather than defaulting to the maximum. There is no stated cap in the statute on how many times an order can be renewed — renewal simply follows the same filing and hearing process used to get the original order. Either the petitioner or the respondent may separately move to modify or terminate an order that was issued after a full hearing (not an ex parte-only order); section 3113.31(E)(8)(c) lists the factors a court must weigh on such a motion, including whether the petitioner consents, whether the petitioner still fears the respondent, whether the respondent has complied with the order, any new domestic violence convictions, and how much time has passed.

The statutory list

What Ohio’s own law says

This is genuinely unusual and worth a reader's attention: unlike New York and Pennsylvania, the text of Ohio Revised Code section 3113.31 does not itself order a respondent to surrender firearms, does not create a state relinquishment, safekeeping, or third-party-transfer mechanism, and does not direct a sheriff to take custody of weapons. The only firearms-related requirement written into the civil protection order statute is that the court must give both parties the notice quoted above — that federal law, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8), may already make it a crime for a person subject to certain protection orders to possess or buy a firearm, and that they should ask a lawyer. Enforcement and confiscation, if any, therefore rest on federal law and on the discretion the court otherwise has, rather than on a dedicated state relinquishment statute. A bill that would have changed this, House Bill 335 of the 133rd General Assembly, was introduced on the Ohio General Assembly's own site with the stated purpose "to require a person who is subject to a civil or criminal domestic violence temporary protection order to surrender the person's firearms," and would have amended sections 2919.26 and 3113.31 and enacted new sections 2919.261 and 3113.311; the bill's own status page shows it was introduced in the House and never advanced past that stage, so it never became law. We did not find, and are not aware of, a later-enacted Ohio statute that fills this gap as of this research date.

Fees

This no-fee rule is written directly into the civil protection order statute itself, not left to a court-system policy page. It covers the filing fee and every downstream cost named — issuance, registering the order in another county, modifying it, enforcing it, dismissing or withdrawing it, serving it, a subpoena for a witness, and even getting a certified copy — for the petitioner. Section 3113.31(J)(2) separately allows the court to assess costs against the respondent in connection with those same steps, and section 3113.31(E)(8)(e) allows the court to assess costs against a respondent whose own motion to modify or terminate the order is denied.

What a violation is, and what it carries

Three things stand out about Ohio's approach. First, the firearms gap described above: Ohio requires the federal-law notice but, unlike many other states, has no state-statute mechanism ordering relinquishment, and a 2019-2020 bill that would have added one (House Bill 335) never passed. Second, Ohio's civil stalking protection order, described below, includes a distinctly Ohio feature not found in the domestic-violence statute: a court may order the respondent to be electronically monitored (GPS-tracked) for a period the court sets, if it finds by clear and convincing evidence that the respondent's past conduct endangered the protected person's health, welfare, or safety and that the respondent presents a continuing danger. Third, Ohio's domestic-violence definition folds a "dating relationship" category into the same statute and the same order (section 3113.31(A)(1)(b)), rather than routing daters to a separate order the way some states do — but several major forms of relief (housing, custody, and support) remain available only to family or household members, not to a petitioner protected solely because of a dating relationship, which is a distinction worth a reader's attention.

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.