Protective orders in Wisconsin.
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 Wisconsin’s own statutes, not summarized.
See a different stateWisconsin
Wisconsin uses two words for two stages of the same thing. A temporary restraining order can be issued without the other person present, by a judge or by a circuit court commissioner. An injunction follows a hearing and is the longer order — up to four years, and up to ten in the most serious cases. Both come from s. 813.12 of the statutes. Where there is no qualifying relationship, the route is a harassment restraining order under s. 813.125 instead.
Does this cover me?
Who can ask for one
Wisconsin builds its restraining order around a defined set of relationships, and the list is wide enough to include two categories people frequently assume are excluded — dating partners, and caregivers and the people they care for.
The order is available between spouses and former spouses, adult family members, household members, people who have a child in common, people in a dating relationship, and a caregiver and care recipient. A family member is a spouse, parent, child, or a person related by blood or adoption. A household member is a person currently or formerly residing with the other. A dating relationship is a romantic or intimate social relationship, and the statute expressly excludes casual acquaintance and business or social contexts — so the question a court asks is about the nature of the relationship, not its length.
What counts as domestic abuse
Wisconsin lists the acts rather than applying a general standard, and two items on the list are worth noticing.
Criminal damage to property is on the list. Breaking your things is domestic abuse in Wisconsin in its own right, not merely evidence of a temper.
And the final limb covers a threat to do any of those things. Nothing has to have happened yet. A credible threat to hurt you, to assault you, or to destroy your property is itself the abuse.
"Intentional impairment of physical condition" is broader than it sounds and covers conduct that leaves no mark — withholding medication, for example, or preventing sleep.
Can I get something today?
The temporary restraining order, and who can issue it
Wisconsin’s threshold for a temporary order is reasonable grounds, which is a lower bar than the immediate-and-present-danger test used in several other states.
Two features of that wording matter. It is satisfied by reasonable grounds to believe the respondent may engage in domestic abuse — not only that they already have. And where the test is met the statute says the judge or circuit court commissioner shall issue the order.
A circuit court commissioner can issue it, not only a judge, which in practice widens the hours and the venues at which you can be heard. The temporary order holds until the injunction hearing, typically within fourteen days.
The order after a hearing
Four years — and ten in the most serious cases
Read the first half of that sentence as carefully as the second. The injunction runs for the period the petitioner requests. If you ask for a year, you may well get a year. The four years is the ceiling, not the default, and no one will ask for you.
Where the court finds a substantial risk that the respondent may commit homicide or a sexual assault against the petitioner, the ceiling rises to ten years.
So the two practical instructions in Wisconsin are: state the period you want, and if the risk is that serious, give the court the material to make the substantial-risk finding.
Firearms
What Wisconsin’s own law says
The requirement goes into the injunction in writing, and the firearms go to the sheriff rather than to a dealer or a friend. That is a narrower route than the several states that let a respondent transfer weapons to a third party of their choosing, and it makes compliance easier to verify.
If they break it
What a violation is, and what it carries
Note that the temporary restraining order carries the same penalty as the injunction. There is no lesser tier for breaking the order made before the hearing, which is not true everywhere.
The violation has to be knowing, so proof that the respondent was aware of the order matters. Keep the proof of service.
Worth knowing about Wisconsin
The things that are different here
The injunction runs for the period you request, up to four years. Ask for what you want; the ceiling is not the default.
Ten years where the court finds a substantial risk of homicide or sexual assault.
Reasonable grounds is the standard, and it covers the risk that the respondent may engage in domestic abuse, not only that they already have.
A circuit court commissioner can issue the temporary order, not only a judge.
Damaging your property is domestic abuse, and so is threatening to.
Caregivers and care recipients are covered, which few states include.
Breaking the temporary order carries the same penalty as breaking the injunction — up to $10,000 and nine months.
Firearms
Surrender to the sheriff, for the life of the injunction
A respondent subject to a Wisconsin domestic abuse injunction is prohibited by law from possessing any firearms for its duration, and where an injunction is issued he must surrender all firearms he owns or possesses to the local sheriff’s department.
The route is narrow — to the sheriff, not to a dealer and not to a friend — which makes compliance straightforward to check. If you have reason to believe firearms were not turned in, the sheriff’s department is where to ask.
One honest caveat: we have not found a provision attaching a number of hours to that surrender the way Colorado, California, Nevada or Maine do. What is clear is that possession is unlawful from the moment the injunction is in force.
Can I get something today?
The fourteen-day clock, confirmed
The temporary restraining order holds the position until the injunction hearing, and Wisconsin sets that hearing within 14 days after the temporary restraining order is issued — unless the time is extended by the written consent of the parties, or to allow for service.
That second exception is the common one. If the respondent has not been served, expect the date to move; it is not a sign that anything has gone wrong, and the temporary order continues meanwhile.
Firearms in Wisconsin: 48 hours, and a hearing built to check
Wisconsin moved its firearm surrender machinery out of § 813.12 into a section of its own, § 813.1285. Anyone still looking in § 813.12 for a subsection (4m) will not find one — there is no such subsection. What is there is one of the more carefully engineered surrender schemes in the country.
The 48-hour order — § 813.1285(1g)
Where the court issues a surrender and extend order it shall:
“(a) Order the respondent to surrender, within a period that is no longer than 48 hours, any firearm that he or she owns or possesses to the sheriff or, in the court’s discretion, to another person. (b) Order that the respondent may possess or transport a firearm only for the purpose of complying with par. (a). … (d) Inform the respondent when the injunction will take effect and the penalty for possessing a firearm while the injunction is in effect. (e) Instruct the respondent how to surrender any firearm. (f) If appropriate, order the respondent to attend a hearing to surrender firearms.”
Paragraph (b) is neat drafting: it creates a narrow lawful window to move the guns for the sole purpose of handing them in, so compliance is not itself an offense.
If they are in the room, the court makes them fill in a form
§ 813.1285(2)(a): “If the respondent is present at the injunction hearing, the court shall stay the injunction for a period not to exceed 48 hours and shall extend the temporary restraining order for 48 hours for the purpose of firearm surrender. The respondent shall provide the court a completed firearm possession form. The court shall verify the information on the firearm possession form and shall make an inquiry on the record as to the contents of the firearm possession form.”
An inquiry on the record. The respondent has to answer the court, out loud, about what firearms they have. That is not a formality — it creates a sworn account they can later be measured against.
And a presumption if the receipt does not arrive
§ 813.1285(4)(b)2: if the respondent has not provided a receipt within 48 hours of the hearing to surrender firearms showing surrender of all firearms subject to the order, “the court shall presume the respondent is violating the order and the injunction” and may notify the sheriff for investigation, schedule another hearing, or “issue a warrant to the sheriff ordering that the respondent be brought before the court to show cause why the respondent should not be held in contempt.”
And § 813.1285(4)(a): “If the respondent fails to attend the hearing to surrender firearms, the court shall issue an arrest warrant for the respondent.” Any firearm surrender hearing is scheduled “to occur within one week of the injunction hearing.”
This is what a scheme with teeth looks like: a deadline, a form, an on-the-record inquiry, a presumption of violation if the paperwork is missing, and an arrest warrant for non-attendance.
▸ See how this compares — all 50 states, side by side
The fourteen-day figure, confirmed
§ 813.12(3)(c)
“The temporary restraining order is in effect until a hearing is held on issuance of an injunction …. A judge or circuit court commissioner shall hold a hearing on issuance of an injunction within 14 days after the temporary restraining order is issued, unless the time is extended upon the written consent of the parties, extended under s. 801.58 (2m), or extended once for 14 days upon a finding that the respondent has not been served with a copy of the temporary restraining order although the petitioner has exercised due diligence. A judge or court commissioner may not extend the temporary restraining order in lieu of ruling on the issuance of an injunction.”
Fourteen days, with three named extension routes and no others. The final sentence is the anti-drift rule: a court cannot keep rolling your temporary order forward instead of deciding whether to grant the injunction.
Two more provisions in § 813.12(3) worth knowing. A temporary restraining order “is not voided if the respondent is admitted into a dwelling that the order directs him or her to avoid” — letting them in does not destroy your order. And the remedies expressly include ordering the respondent “to refrain from removing, hiding, damaging, harming, or mistreating, or disposing of, a household pet” and to allow you or someone acting for you “to retrieve a household pet.”
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: Wis. Stat. s. 813.12, "Domestic abuse restraining orders and injunctions." Definitions at s. 813.12(1). Temporary restraining orders at s. 813.12(3). Injunctions, the hearing and duration at s. 813.12(4). Firearms at s. 813.12(4m). Penalty at s. 813.12(8). Harassment restraining orders are dealt with separately at s. 813.125. 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 Wisconsin. 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 Wisconsin presumes about custody, and the emergency jurisdiction that exists when someone has to leave the state.