Washington 'Restraining Orders': Protection Orders, Divorce TROs, and What the 2022 Rewrite Actually Changed

If you are in immediate danger, call 911. For a confidential safety plan in Pierce County, the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center helpline is (253) 798-4166. Statewide, CLEAR at (888) 201-1014 can connect you to legal help, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.

Type 'restraining order Washington' into a search bar and you will still land on pages that quote a statute the legislature repealed. Chapter 26.50 RCW — the old Domestic Violence Prevention Act — went away on July 1, 2022. What replaced it is chapter 7.105 RCW: one civil petition, six kinds of protection order, a modern definition of domestic violence, and a set of rules about duration, firearms, children, and renewal that the older marketing copy never absorbed.

This guide is written for Pierce County and Puyallup families who need the current framework, not a slogan. It is general education, not a prediction of how a commissioner will rule on your declaration. If you are asking for an order, or you have been served with one, the facts in the petition and the exact words on the signed order are what matter.

People Say 'Restraining Order.' Washington Has Three Different Tools.

The confusion is not just vocabulary. Each of these orders lives in a different statute, is issued by a different process, and dies on a different timeline. Mixing them up is how people either under-protect themselves or walk into a criminal charge they did not see coming.

• Civil protection order (chapter 7.105 RCW): a stand-alone civil case. You do not need a police report, a pending criminal charge, or a divorce. This is the order that replaced the old 'DVPO under 26.50.'
• Temporary restraining order in a family-law case (RCW 26.09.060): a motion inside a divorce, legal separation, invalidity, or parentage case. It is built to freeze property, keep a parent from removing a child from the court's reach, and — when the affidavit supports it — keep someone away from a home, school, or workplace. It generally ends when the final decree is entered.
• Criminal no-contact order (chapter 10.99 RCW): entered in a criminal case, often at arraignment. It lasts as long as the criminal case (and sometimes as a condition of a sentence). If the prosecutor dismisses the charge, this order usually disappears with it — which is one reason a survivor may still want a civil protection order that does not depend on the criminal docket.

The Washington Hope Card Program makes the distinction concrete: Hope Cards are available for full civil protection orders. They are not issued for temporary protection orders, for criminal no-contact orders, or for family-law restraining orders. If a page still treats all three as the same piece of paper, it is describing a different legal system than the one Pierce County actually runs.

You can ask for a protection order inside a dissolution. RCW 26.09.060(3) lets either party request a domestic violence or antiharassment protection order on a temporary basis in the family-law case, with residential provisions for children still decided under chapter 26.09, not copied over from the protection-order relief list. A protection order can also run as its own case. The two files can exist at the same time. The court is not allowed to deny a protection-order petition just because a restraining order or a no-contact order is already on the books.

Six Civil Protection Orders — One Petition Form

RCW 7.105.100 is the filing statute. The official petition is PO 001, last revised in 2026. You pick the type that matches the relationship and the conduct. The court is not supposed to bounce you because a different label would have been 'less severe' for the respondent.

• Domestic violence protection order (DVPO): the respondent is an intimate partner or a family or household member, and the petitioner has been subjected to domestic violence as defined in RCW 7.105.010.
• Sexual assault protection order (SAPO): nonconsensual sexual conduct, nonconsensual sexual penetration, or commercial sexual exploitation. A single incident is enough. You do not have to prove a dating relationship.
• Stalking protection order: stalking as defined in the same statute, including cyber harassment and a course of conduct that would frighten a reasonable person — even if the respondent 'did not mean it that way.'
• Antiharassment protection order: unlawful harassment, which can be a course of conduct or, in defined situations, a single threat of violence. This is the usual tool when the other person is a neighbor, coworker, or acquaintance rather than a partner or relative.
• Vulnerable adult protection order: abandonment, abuse, financial exploitation, or neglect of a vulnerable adult, or a threat of those things.
• Extreme risk protection order (ERPO): the respondent poses a significant danger of causing personal injury to self or others by having, buying, or receiving a firearm. An intimate partner, a family or household member, or a law enforcement agency may petition. An ERPO is about weapons access, not a stay-away from a person.

If the person who hurt you is a spouse, former spouse, dating partner, co-parent, or someone you live or lived with, the statute says you should — but are not required to — use a DVPO rather than a SAPO or a stalking order. The petition is not dismissed just because the facts would also support a different type. A 15-year-old may file in their own name. A child under 15 needs an authorized adult to file.

Domestic Violence Is Broader Than a Police Report

This is the place where pages written against the old RCW 26.50.010 definition go stale. Under RCW 7.105.010(10), domestic violence between intimate partners, or between family or household members, includes physical harm and assault. It also includes the infliction of fear of physical harm, nonconsensual sexual conduct or penetration, stalking, unlawful harassment, and coercive control.

Coercive control is a pattern of behavior used to cause physical, emotional, or psychological harm and that, in purpose or effect, unreasonably interferes with a person's free will and personal liberty. The statute's examples are specific: destroying property, using technology to monitor or impersonate, displaying a firearm to intimidate, reckless driving with children in the car, threats to a career or to immigration status, taking identity documents, isolation from friends and work, financial exploitation, and abusive litigation. Protective actions taken in good faith to keep yourself or a child safe are not coercive control.

'Intimate partner' covers current and former spouses and domestic partners, people who have a child in common (unless the child was conceived through sexual assault), and dating relationships where both people are at least 13. 'Family or household members' covers blood, marriage, domestic partnership, adoption, people who currently or formerly lived together, parent-child relationships including step- and grand-relationships, a parent's intimate partner and that parent's children, and a current or former legal guardian. A former roommate can be a family or household member for this statute. A dating partner you never lived with is an intimate partner.

RCW 7.105.225 is the grant-or-deny statute. The standard is a preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not — that the petitioner proved the criteria for that type of order. The court may not deny a petition because nobody called the police, because the last incident was not recent, because the respondent moved away, because the petitioner is a minor, or because a criminal no-contact order or a family-law restraining order already exists. If the court denies the order, it has to say why in writing, on the mandatory form.

Temporary Orders, Full Hearings, and What the Paper Can Actually Do

You can ask for an ex parte temporary protection order when you file, without prior notice to the other side, if the petition shows that serious immediate harm or irreparable injury could result from waiting. Under RCW 7.105.305, that temporary order is issued for a period not to exceed 14 days at first and can be extended for good cause. If you file before close of business on a judicial day, the full hearing is supposed to be set no later than 14 days out. If the court denies the temporary order, it still has to set a full hearing unless the petition does not even make a prima facie case. Denying the emergency paper is not the same as throwing the case out.

For a temporary DVPO, there is a rebuttable presumption that the petitioner's minor children will be included as protected parties until the full hearing, unless there is good cause not to include them. If the court leaves the children off, it has to make written findings. That presumption exists because the window between filing and the full hearing is a documented high-risk period. It is not a final custody decision.

After notice and a hearing, RCW 7.105.310 gives the court a long list of relief. The stay-away distance is presumptively at least 1,000 feet unless the court finds good cause for something shorter. The court can exclude the respondent from a shared residence; keep them from a workplace, school, or day care; restrain third-party contact; award essential personal effects and a vehicle; award exclusive control of a pet; order a certified domestic-violence perpetrator program or a mental-health or chemical-dependency evaluation; restrain distribution of intimate images; and restrict abusive litigation. Mutual full protection orders are disfavored. The court may not order the petitioner into treatment, drug testing, or a psychological evaluation as the price of getting protected.

Children are the sharpest edge of the order. If the parties have children in common, the protection-order court may make residential provisions on the same basis as chapter 26.09 — but it is not required to enter a full parenting plan, and it may not delay relief because the parties 'could just file a parenting-plan case instead.' A protection order can suspend the restrained parent's contact under an existing parenting plan, subject to further orders in the family-law case. That is not a modification of the parenting plan. It is a safety overlay. Sorting the two out is often the real legal work after the hearing.

Firearms, Duration, Renewal, and Hope Cards

When the court issues a qualifying protection order or a family-law restraining order, it has to consider RCW 9.41.800 and, where that statute requires it, order the respondent to surrender firearms, dangerous weapons, and any concealed pistol license, and prohibit future possession and purchase. The pattern form is WS 001, Order to Surrender and Prohibit Weapons. Compliance is tracked with proof-of-surrender and compliance/noncompliance orders. An ERPO is a dedicated weapons case under the same chapter. Possessing or buying a gun in violation of one of these orders is its own problem, on top of the contact violation.

Duration is not 'one year, period.' Under RCW 7.105.315, after notice and a hearing the court may grant relief for a fixed period or enter a permanent order. Permanent orders are set to expire 99 years from issuance. Other than antiharassment orders, the court is not supposed to grant less than one year unless the petitioner asks for a shorter term. If the order restrains the respondent from contacting the respondent's own minor children, that restraint is for a fixed period not to exceed one year (this cap does not apply to orders issued in a 26.09, 26.26A, or 26.26B family-law case). Pages that still say a 'permanent' protection order lasts one year are describing the old practice, not the current statute.

Renewal sits in RCW 7.105.405. You may move to renew in the 90 days before a fixed-term order expires. The petitioner does not have to prove a current reasonable fear of harm. The court shall grant the renewal unless the respondent proves, by a preponderance, both a substantial change in circumstances and that the respondent will not resume the conduct when the order expires. The court may not deny renewal just because there has been no violation, because time has passed, or because the respondent moved. A renewed order that includes the parties' children may run more than one year, subject to later family-law orders. A minor who ages out while protected can pick the case up in their own name.

Once you have a full (not temporary) civil protection order, you can request a free Washington Hope Card from the Administrative Office of the Courts. The wallet card carries the restrained person's identifiers, the protected parties, the case number, the issuing court, and the issuance and expiration dates. It is not a substitute for the order. Law enforcement still has to verify. You get one card per protected party plus one extra. If the order is modified, destroy the old cards and request new ones. You can also register with the VINE protective-order notification service so you get notice when an order is about to expire.

Violating the Order Is a Crime — and a Family-Law Fact

A protection order is a civil case. Violating it is not. Under RCW 7.105.450, a knowing violation of the restraint, exclusion, stay-away, or pet-interference provisions of a DVPO, SAPO, stalking order, or vulnerable-adult order is generally a gross misdemeanor. A law enforcement officer who has probable cause shall arrest without a warrant. The presence of the order in a police computer is not the only way to prove the restrained person knew about it. An assault that violates the order (and is not first- or second-degree assault) is a class C felony, as is reckless conduct that creates a substantial risk of death or serious injury, and as is a violation after at least two prior convictions for violating protection or similar orders. The violation is also contempt of court.

That is why the first instruction after service is to follow the order as written, including the parts you think are unfair, while you prepare for the hearing or a motion to modify. Texting 'just this once,' asking a relative to pass a message, driving past the house 'to get my stuff,' or showing up at a child's soccer game because the parenting plan used to allow it can all be a violation if the protection order says otherwise. If you are the protected party and the other person is contacting you, document it and call law enforcement. Do not try to negotiate a side agreement that contradicts the order.

How a Protection Order Interacts with a Pierce County Parenting Plan

Older family-law pages often say that once a protection order is entered, RCW 26.09.191 'requires' restrictions in the parenting plan, full stop. The statute was rewritten in 2025, and the current text is more precise. The weight given to the existence of a protection order issued under chapter 7.105 (or former chapter 26.50) is within the discretion of the court. What still requires residential-time limitations is a finding that a parent has a history of acts of domestic violence as defined in RCW 7.105.010, an assault causing grievous bodily harm or the fear of it, or any sexual assault — or that the parent knowingly lives with someone who has that history.

Those mandatory limitations include more than a smaller weekend. The court shall order sole decision-making and no dispute resolution other than court action after that finding, unless it makes express written findings, by clear and convincing evidence, that it would be contrary to the child's best interests. After a domestic-violence finding there is a rebuttable presumption of sole decision-making, and the court shall not require face-to-face mediation or other interventions that put the parties in the same physical or virtual space. Supervised visitation, when ordered, now comes with a presumption of a professional supervisor, which can be overcome only on a specific showing.

The 2025 statute also says, in so many words, that good-faith protective actions — calling law enforcement, seeking a protection order, asking to change residential time — are not 'abusive use of conflict' and are not a basis to punish the parent who asked for help. That matters in Pierce County cases where one parent files a DVPO and the other parent answers with a claim that the filing itself is alienation. The protection-order hearing and the parenting-plan trial are still different proceedings, with different burdens and different remedies. Treating the DVPO as if it were already a final residential schedule, or treating a denied DVPO as if domestic violence never happened, is how both sides overread a single hearing.

Pierce County Practice: Where You File, Who Helps, and What a Commissioner Reads

Most Puyallup, South Hill, Sumner, and Tacoma families file in the County-City Building at 930 Tacoma Avenue South. The type of order still affects the counter. A domestic violence protection order is filed in Pierce County Superior Court. There is no filing fee for a DVPO. Superior Court also handles the online civil-protection-order portal described on the county's civil protection orders page. You can file in person in Room 110. The Crystal Judson Family Justice Center (718 Court E, Tacoma; helpline (253) 798-4166) encourages people to talk with an advocate before filing so the petition matches a safety plan, not just a form.

Antiharassment and stalking protection orders are commonly filed in Pierce County District Court, which has its own LINX online petition. Save the petition ID, cause number, and PIN. District Court staff at (253) 798-7487, or the counter in Room 239, complete the filing after an online submission. Petitions confirmed before 11:00 a.m. may be reviewed the same day; later filings roll to the next business day. Antiharassment petitions have a filing fee (fee waivers exist); stalking petitions do not. Extreme risk, sexual assault, and vulnerable-adult petitions follow the type-specific instructions on the same county page. Always use the current Washington Courts protection-order forms rather than an old 26.50 packet.

Service still has to happen. A temporary order does not enforce itself against someone who has not been served or does not otherwise know of it. Identify a workable address, workplace, or electronic means. Proof of service is form PO 004. If you cannot locate the respondent, the statute allows the court to authorize electronic service, mail, or publication in defined situations — that is a motion, not a guess. Remote hearings by telephone or video are built into chapter 7.105 unless the court finds it necessary and material for the parties to appear in person. Bring a declaration that is specific about dates, quotes, screenshots, and injuries, not a ten-page narrative about the marriage. The commissioner is deciding whether the statutory criteria are more likely than not, on this petition, for this type of order.

A well-built petition — or a well-built response — is less about winning a label and more about matching the relationship, the conduct, and the relief to the statute that actually applies in 2026. If you are starting a Pierce County protection-order case, answering one, or trying to line an order up with a parenting plan, talking with a Puyallup family law attorney early is how you avoid copying a 'restraining order' script from a repealed chapter.