Being served an order of protection

David Siegel: What are the typical scenarios, though, at that hearing on the 21-day date that they return? What is the typical outcome, in your experience? Are they continued? Are they dropped? Is there just a stay-away order? What usually happens?

Jesse Barrientes: Well, first, on the initial order of protection, I think a lot of times the judges want to err on the side of safety, but it’s also, sometimes, they have to weigh the hardships, because some of the remedies you have in an order of protection are exclusive possession of the residence. So if the judge enters it, hey, you’re going to be excluded from the house and now you don’t have anything. Once you’re served, okay, you can’t go back in or violate it; otherwise, you’re going to have some other problems.

Now, if they serve you at work or some other place, you can’t go back home. Now what do you have? You’ve got the clothes that are on your back. But a lot of judges still will err on the side of the safety of the individual. A lot of times it also involves children, too, as protected parties that they want to protect. But, you can come in on two days’ notice to try to vacate that.

David Siegel: And I’ve seen that quite a bit, especially in cases where respondents feel that the emergency order was entered in error or without merit. They don’t wait to 21 days. They immediately come running in to vacate that emergency order.

Jesse Barrientes: Right. And they have to file the motion to vacate, but in those initial contacts, I think a lot of times the judges are more inclined to grant them for that reason. But, it’s important for people to know – and I’ve done that, too – for me, what I want to know, and what I always try to do is get the transcripts, because they’re always recorded. I want the transcripts from that initial order of protection to hear what the petitioner has said to the court, so that I can properly and adequately represent my client.

David Siegel: Isn’t it mostly going to mirror what the allegations are in the petition itself?

Jesse Barrientes: That’s the assumption. It may and it should, but as me doing my due diligence, I really need to get that. Now, in a perfect world, you’d have that but a lot of times if you’re running in on those two-day notices, you don’t have the benefit of that, but I think if it’s at all possible you can do that, that’s the way to be able to do it.

David Siegel: And that stems from your background as a criminal attorney as well as a Joliet divorce lawyer, because I know in the past with DUIs and things like that, you wanted those transcripts. You wanted to know exactly what was in the police report. You wanted to know what was said at the initial hearing, because you wanted to be able to attack it, correct?

Jesse Barrientes: Right. I want to know exactly, and then once you have it in the transcript, that is a statement made to a court, to a tribunal, and it’s made under oath. A lot of times – I had one recently where the allegations in the petition for the order of protection was a little bit different than what they had testified to, and it wasn’t in there. So again, that’s something that you need to know, to be able to kind of lock them down. But you were talking before about what happens at the hearing.

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