Domestic violence is a serious issue in New Jersey, and if you’re a victim, or if you’ve been wrongly accused, it’s important you understand what to expect from the law and the process.  Watch the above video featuring New Jersey domestic violence attorney Jordan Rickards to learn more, and please contact our office if you would like our assistance.

What follows below is a transcript of the above video:

“Hi, everybody. Today’s topic is domestic violence, and it is a big topic, but it’s a really important one, especially with all the acts of domestic violence we’re seeing these days. I mean, it’s really hitting epidemic proportions. And I’m actually kind of disappointed in myself that I’ve done all these videos on other areas of family law, but it’s taken me this long to do one on I think what is arguably the most important aspect of family law, and that’s domestic violence. All right. This video is going to be a basic overview of domestic violence law and procedure. I intend to do another one later on that’s going to be more advanced, but I didn’t want to do that one first because I think you really need to have the overview before you go to the more advanced things.

Before I get into the video, though, I want to just address two quick topics. Number one, if you are a victim of domestic violence, you really need an attorney. This is not simple stuff. And if you’re worried that you can’t afford an attorney because you don’t have any money, maybe because your husband is really controlling, which we see a lot, and he controls all the money and you don’t have access to it, or maybe you just in general just don’t have a lot of resources available to you, don’t worry. At the end of this video, I’m going to explain actually how you can get resources available to you so that money should not become an impediment to you having an attorney for a domestic violence hearing. So that’s number one.

Number two, I obviously cannot control who watches these videos, but I can control the cases I take. So here’s the thing, if you are a victim of domestic violence, feel free to call me. If you are a victim of somebody bringing a wrongful, frivolous claim of domestic violence against you, in other words, if you’ve been wrongly accused of domestic violence, which happens a lot in the family law context because a lot of times people will use these things, not so much as a shield, but as a sword to get an advantage in a divorce proceeding. If you’re a victim of that, feel free to call me. If on the other hand, you’ve committed an act of domestic violence and you are looking for a lawyer to assist you in getting away with it, I’m going to tell you right now, just don’t waste my time or your time calling me. I’m not going to take your case.

And honestly, you wouldn’t even want me to because I think for a lawyer to do well for somebody, they really have to believe in that person to fight for them, and that’s just not going to be me. You know, I’m not interested in helping somebody abuse their wife or abuse their spouse or anything like that. So, I can’t stop you from watching the video, but please just don’t call my office, because it’s just going to be a total waste of your time and mine. 

Okay. So let’s get into a basic overview of domestic violence law in New Jersey. And all this is governed by what’s called Prevention of Domestic Violence Act. And if you’re a real legal nerd, and you want to look that up, it’s actually in the criminal code, it’s not in the family law so much. I mean, it is part of family law, but you find it in the criminal code under what’s called Section 2C, which means criminal code, New Jersey’s 2C:25-17. That’s called the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act. And a domestic violence act starts with what’s called a predicate act.
And this is just an unnecessarily complicated way of saying that there’s been some harm caused to the victim. There are 19 of these. And you’re going to forgive me because I’m actually going to read this off the list. I normally don’t read off of a script or anything, but it’s hard to memorize 19 things when you’re trying to just do this in one take.

So what are the predicate acts of domestic violence? Well, assault is an obvious one, right? Terroristic threats, harassment, which can just mean somebody’s constantly bothering you or making loud and offensive communications, believe it or not, stalking, criminal mischief, which means somebody, for example, is breaking your stuff. Even somebody just taking your cell phone and smashing it. That can be an act of criminal mischief. Criminal restraint, meaning they’re prohibiting you from going somewhere or doing something that you want to be doing. Second cousin to this is false imprisonment. That’s the same basic idea. You don’t need to be a legal scholar, by the way, to understand these. I mean instinctively, if you think you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, don’t worry. The cops and your attorney will figure out what boxes to check. I’m just going through these.

Burglary is another one. Criminal sexual contact or sexual assault, kidnapping, lewdness, for example, someone even exposing themselves to you, criminal trespassing, homicide, obviously homicide, not if you were dead because you wouldn’t need one then, but like an attempted homicide is one. As a practical matter, if somebody attempts to kill you, they’re going to be in jail anyway and you can get a restraining order while they’re there. But the point is that is yet another predicate act, criminal coercion, where somebody’s using criminal means to force you to do something maybe that you don’t want to do. Robbery, contempt of a domestic violence restraining order, so if a domestic violence restraining order has already issued and they’re violating it, that’s a predicate act. Cyber harassment is another one. That’s very popular these days, people saying bad things about you on Twitter or Facebook or things like that, or here’s the catchall, any other crime involving risk of death or bodily injury.

So here’s the thing, if you think you’re a victim of domestic violence, those are the predicate acts, but it’s best just to go to the police and let them figure out exactly what law applies here. And in fact, as a practical matter, a lot of times the police, when you get these restraining order forms, they have all the boxes for the different predicate acts and they might check one or two, but when you hire your attorney, they might review the evidence and see that other boxes should have been checked as well. And that’s really important because your attorney then has to make a motion to amend the restraining order before you ever get to trial because if the restraining order doesn’t allege what actually happened, then you can’t bring that up in the trial. And that’s true of both the predicate acts just in terms of checking off the boxes like this happened, criminal mischief, criminal restraints, sexual assault, but also the narrative. The restraining order when you see it is not just going to say, here are the predicate acts. It’s also going to give a blurb basically on what happened.

And it’s also going to give a blurb, or at least it should at least mention prior acts of domestic violence. You know, a lot of times women in particular are victims of domestic violence several times before they ever move forward with getting a restraining order for various reasons. This is part of the cycle of domestic violence. Women, they get abused and they’re afraid to do anything about it. Well, you want to not only indicate what happened in this most recent act of domestic violence, you want to indicate the prior acts, which maybe spanned many years that occurred before this, and maybe you don’t have a police report for it. That’s fine. Maybe you don’t have hospital records for it. You know, that’s fine. I mean it would be more helpful if you did, but what you really just need to do is just articulate the allegations you’re going to make because if you don’t do it upfront in the restraining order, there are judges who will stop you from presenting it at the actual restraining order hearing when you’re trying to get things finalized. 

So that’s a basic overview of a predicate act. Here’s the second thing though. It has to be from somebody with whom you are in or have had a domestic relationship. I’m going to add a caveat to this, but it generally can’t just be a stranger or like let’s say a coworker. All right. Or somebody who you just run into all the time or something like that. There’s a requirement that you had a domestic relationship with that person, and here’s what that means. It could include a spouse, a former spouse, or any other person who is at present a household member or who was at any time a household member. That’s one category. Another one, also a victim of domestic violence also includes any person regardless of age who has been subjected to domestic violence by a person with whom the victim has a child in common or with whom the victim anticipates having a child in common, if one of the parties is pregnant. Or number three, a victim of domestic violence includes any person who’s been subjected to domestic violence by a person with whom the victim has had a dating relationship.

So it’s got to fit into one of those categories. Now, there is a law kicking around to amend this that would remove the requirement that the aggressor be somebody with whom you’ve had a domestic relationship. But that’s not law yet. And there is case law that exists. You might want to look at stuff called State versus Beretta, where the appellate division has really interpreted this very expansively to even include someone who’s stalking you maybe. All right. It’s kind of complicated. What the appellate division in that case, the basic facts of that case were this person had met another woman at a real estate conference and wound up stalking her and going to her house, and they never really had a dating relationship, but the appellate division said, well, this is close enough. Obviously he had romantic leanings towards her, and it was her rejection of the dating relationship that led to the stalking and harassment and stuff, and that was considered to be enough for a restraining order to issue. 

So again, there has to have been a domestic relationship, but there are kind of ways that you can bend that rule a little bit. All right. And like I said, it might change even by the time you watch this video. I don’t know. But let’s just talk in plain terms. We’ll make a very common example here. Man and woman are living together, and I know it goes both ways. I’ve been on both sides of this. Let’s just take a common example. Man and woman are living together and the man threatens to kill the wife or maybe he hits her or something like that, and the woman calls the police. That’s one way a restraining order can issue. The police come. They ask what happened. They do some investigation, sometimes not much of an investigation, by the way, which is why a lot of people are wrongfully charged with these things. I’m just being real with you. And they’ll issue criminal charges against the person, but also a restraining order.

In a separate video, I will deal with how the criminal charges and the restraining order intersect with one another because they actually proceed on two different tracks in the court system, on two different timelines, in actually two different courts, and it’s kind of confusing. So I’m not going to explain that here. That’s advanced stuff. But let’s just go with basic stuff right now. Okay. Woman is victim of domestic violence. She calls the cops. My husband or boyfriend just hit me. They come. They arrest him. And they issue what’s called a temporary restraining order. A temporary restraining order means that that person, the assailant, cannot have any kind of contact with that victim, again, temporary for now, cannot have any kind of contact with that victim, direct or indirect. Direct is something like going to that person’s house, going to their place of business, calling them, texting them. That’s all direct contact. What is equally common though, and you see this a lot, is indirect contact.

So sending messages through a third party, the husband or whatever tells his brother to contact his wife and say, I’m sorry, or tells the wife’s brother or tells a mutual friend, or they go through their parents or something. You can’t do that either. That’s indirect contact and that’s just as bad as direct contact. It also means that in all likelihood, the person against whom the restraining order is issued is probably going to be removed from that household. All right. And if there are children in common, there’s probably going to be a custody and parenting time arrangement where the victim has full custody until further court notice. Now if you are accused of domestic violence, your attorney, and sometimes it can take you a while to get into court and maybe you’re going to go a month or two without seeing your kids.

So you want your attorney to quickly file an appeal to say, judge, I’m not necessarily appealing the issuance of the restraining order because that’s for a later hearing, but I want you to at least grant my client parenting time in the meantime, even if it’s limited so we can just see the kids while the restraining order is pending. All right? So the point is, when a temporary restraining order is issued, it’s going to be issued basically without a hearing. The cops technically can’t issue it themselves, but they’ll call a judge themselves. You won’t be on the phone. The other side won’t be on the phone, just the cops and a judge. And a judge will just decide on his own whether or not to issue it, and they almost always do. All right. And when that issues again, now the assailant or the accused that’s called the accused can’t have any contact with that victim until further court order. That accused is going to be removed from the home. The accused will probably lose custody and parenting time of the children on a temporary basis.

He might have to pay support in the meantime, and any weapons that he has is going to be seized pending further court order. Quick aside, you don’t necessarily have to go to the police to get a restraining order. I always recommend you do because it’s just better. They’re there to respond immediately. But let’s say you didn’t do that. You can actually go to the courts. You go to the intake office, for example, in Middlesex, you go to New Brunswick to 120 New Street. You go to the intake office and you say I’d like to apply for a temporary restraining order. And a judge will hear you that day in all likelihood and decide whether or not a temporary restraining order should be issued. Or again, even if it’s a few days past the predicate act of domestic violence, you can always go to the police. But my point is if the police won’t issue it, you can go to the courts. All right. So there’s two avenues. It’s better to go through the police, I believe, but you can always go through the courts as well. 

So whether you went through the courts or whether you went to the police, you’ll get a court date on this restraining order. Now, the rule is you’re supposed to then have a final restraining order hearing within a few days. And the idea is to take this temporary piece of paper, which by the way, the police or sheriff’s department is then going to physically serve on the defendant. And you want to take this thing and you want to make it a permanent or what’s called a final restraining order, an FRO. If you hear the expressions, TRO and FRO in a restraining order context, that’s what it means. TRO means temporary restraining order. FRO means final restraining order. And again, a TRO has all the protections of the FRO, which is temporary, temporary pending the final restraining order. So you get your temporary, your TRO, and you’re going to get a court date that’s associated with that. And that’s for your FRO.

And usually the court date is very quick, or at least the initial one is very quick and it’ll say like a week to 10 days because the statute says that should happen. As a practical matter, it often doesn’t. And so what’ll happen is either the defendant will retain an attorney or the victim will retain an attorney or both, and they’ll contact the court and say, judge, I need you to fit something into my schedule here. And they’ll get an adjournment. Okay. They’ll get a new court date to work things, not to work things out, but a new court date to come back. And it could be a month later or two months later. All right. Now, ever since the pandemic, our courts have been really screwed up. And I even had a case, in fact, it was Mercer County where I believe a temporary restraining order was issued in January of 2022 for something that happened in December of 2021. And I didn’t get into court on that until November of 2022, 11 months later. And nobody had asked for an adjournment. The courts just kept moving it. So it was crazy, but that’s kind of an extreme example.

In general, once a temporary restraining order issues, that thing is going to get its final hearing within a month or two depending on everyone’s schedule. All right. So what happens at this final hearing? Well, at the final hearing, you and your attorney, assuming you’re the victim in this, you have to first prove a predicate act. You have to prove jurisdiction, which means that there was a domestic relationship. We talked about that. But then you have to prove a predicate act by what’s called a preponderance of the evidence. It is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s a criminal case. This is a very, very low threshold, just a preponderance of the evidence, which just means that the judge is going to more likely than not believe you. Basically 50% plus one is what it means. But you not just have to prove the predicate act. You have to also prove what are called the “Silver” factors.

And if you hear that expression in court, what it means is you have to not just prove that you’re a victim of domestic violence, but that you have what’s called the continuing need for the protections of the restraining order. And that’s why it’s so important that you bring up and you amend your temporary restraining order to include any prior bad acts because if there have been a bunch of bad acts, you don’t want to show up to court and have the judge think this is a first offense because then the judge is going to say, well, they’ve been together 20 years. This is a one time thing. You want the judge to see if there is a pattern. And I’m not saying there necessarily has to be a pattern, but if there is, you want to prove that. Now there is kind of an interplay, by the way, between the predicate act and the continuing need. And this is not written in a statute, but I’m going to just help you out.

The more serious the predicate act, and the more you’re able to prove the predicate act, the less you really have to show a continuing need because the seriousness of it demonstrates a continuing need. So if I show up to court, I don’t care if people have been together 20 years, if I show up to court and I show a judge a picture of a victim and she is all black and blue and bloodied, and it was a first offense, that speaks for itself. There’s no judge who’s going to say, well, there’s not a continuing need here. You think that judge wants to see his name in the paper when that girl goes home and gets beaten up again? I mean, you don’t really have to show all that much.

On the other hand, if all I’m going to court with is some guy kind of harassed you by sending you too many text messages or something like that, and they’re kind of obnoxious, but they’re not that bad and you told must stop and he did, and maybe it only occurred over the span of a few days, well that that’s still a predicate act. That’s still harassment. But I better be able to show a lot more than that in order for me to show a continuing need. You kind of follow? So if the predicate act is more serious, it becomes a lot easier to show a continuing need than if the predicate act is less serious. And believe me, listen, I believe all acts of domestic violence are serious, but even within the spectrum of seriousness, some are more severe than others. Right? And so all I’m saying is it just becomes easier for me to, as an attorney, get the restraining order, if the predicate act is more serious. And so at this trial, it’s going to be different than a criminal trial.

And that first of all, let me just actually tell you what to expect. You’re going to go to court and your case is not going to be the only one on the docket that day. When I was a clerk, we used to have 20 domestic violence trials scheduled for the same day because we knew that literally half of them were going to be drops. Half of them, the victims were going to walk into court and say, judge dropped this for me. And that was a shame because I bet a lot of them were real and domestic violence restraining orders should have been issued and of the other half some you’re going to start the trials and they’re going to do some throughout the day. Some of these trials only take a half hour, or some take an hour, some take two, and they’re just not going to get to some of them. That’s reality. You’re going to sit in court.

I mean, I’ve had situations where you sit in court and you get there at 9:00 AM you sit there till 12:30 and the judge says, we’re not going to get to your case today. We’ll give you a new date and you’ve wasted three and a half hours. All right. And that’s just how it is. That’s just the system. All right? So number one, there’s going to be a lot of waiting around. All right? When you finally get your case called, you’re hopeful that it all gets done the same day. But there are times when the judge can only do an hour of testimony that day and he’ll say, okay, we’ll pick this up later, and he’ll give you a new court date and it probably won’t be the next day. I had a case when I was a clerk, and this was a long time ago, but we had 17 different dates for this one trial, and we were just doing an hour at a time. And I don’t think this is a good way of doing it at all, by the way, I’m just telling you that’s what happened. 

So that, that’s a rare example, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same date. If the case gets adjourned, by the way, if it has to continue, don’t worry. The restraining order will stay in full force in effect, but I’m just saying this is what could happen. All right? And this is a whole stressful process. Let’s say you finally got into court. The judge called your case. They finally have time for you. What’s going to happen?

You’re going to sit at one table with your attorney. The other guy is going to sit at his table, if he has an attorney, and there’s a witness stand, and the judge is going to say, okay, call your first witness. You’ll be allowed to testify. You can call any witnesses you want who have relevant information, and you can present whatever evidence you want. You cannot hold up your cell phone, by the way, and just say, judge, look at my cell phone. You have to print things like that out ahead of time. Or if it’s a video, you have to have it ready to be played. Audio, well, audio, you can kind of play into the record, but video and photographs and stuff like that, that’s got to be done ahead of time. All right? Sometimes you can bring the police officer and also, if there was an investigation. A lot of times those guys have body-worn cameras in their chest. You want to bring that in.

And your attorney’s going to know how to get all that into evidence. The other attorney will have every opportunity to cross-examine you and anyone else who testifies, which means he can ask you questions also. All right? And they can call their own witnesses. And the judge is sitting up there taking notes, and at the end, the judge is going to determine did you guys prove jurisdiction? Was there a domestic relationship? And there almost always is. Did you prove a predicate act of domestic violence? And did you also prove a continuing need for a restraining order? And if he decides yes, then that restraining order is going to issue. And all those restraints I talked about previously, they become permanent, no contact.

Although if you have children, sometimes you can have limited contact for the purpose of only discussing parenting of the children. But removal from the home in all likelihood, again, there’s going to custody determination made, but that’s usually temporary. So if there’s going to be a divorce, they’ll kind of let that get more, decided more thoroughly in the divorce. I apologize for kind of the sloppy English there, but that will be addressed in the divorce context. They’ll create something temporary, but in the divorce, they’ll go through it more thoroughly. Or even if you’re not getting divorced, you can open what’s called an FD docket and deal with that there also. And again, seizure and forfeiture of the weapons, and there’s going to be an award of support also. Now, is there plea bargaining in domestic violence cases? The answer is technically no. However, a lot of times these things get resolved in ways other than restraining orders on one hand or the case getting dropped on another. And that’s through what’s called a civil restraint. A civil restraint is basically a consent order.

And the beauty of these things is you can kind of fashion your own language. It’s whatever you guys agree to where you say, look, nobody is admitting or denying that there was a act of domestic violence here. Although sometimes you can force him to admit that as part of an agreement. What we’re saying is we don’t want there to be a restraining order, but we also don’t want contact. Or you can say we only want a limited amount of contact, but we want the court to issue an order that is along these lines that allows me to feel protected. Now, why might you want to do that? Well, for example, one of the problems with the restraining order is a lot of times if a restraining order is issued, the guy who gets the restraining order against him will lose his job. Well, good luck getting child support then or spousal support. All right? Maybe you don’t want to do that. Maybe you don’t want it to be that severe. Maybe you still want to have a good relationship with this person because maybe the restraining order wasn’t entirely necessary. 

So there are reasons you might want civil restraints, and you can make them pretty severe or you can make them pretty lenient. But here’s the key distinction you have to understand. If somebody violates a restraining order, that’s a predicate act of domestic violence. You call the police. That guy leaves in handcuffs immediately. If somebody violates a civil restraint, it’s not necessarily the case. If they violate it by committing another act of domestic violence, yeah, you call the police and they get arrested and all that. But if they just violate it by contacting you, for example, or some other minor deviation, the police won’t arrest them for that. And your remedy is then you have to file a motion with the court for sanctions. Then you can use it as an excuse to try to get a second domestic violence restraining order, which is true. Even if you drop the restraining order entirely without civil restraints, you always have the right to come back to court if you’re a victim again.

My only point is with a restraining order, you have immediate access to the police coming and arresting somebody, whereas with a civil restraint, that’s really not going to happen unless there’s another predicate act. Your remedy is just to file a motion with the court for some kind of sanctions. All right? So that is a basic overview of the domestic violence process. Now, I promised you at the beginning, and if you’ve gone these 24 and a half minutes here, this is what you’ve been waiting for. If you’re a victim of domestic violence and you’re wondering, how can I afford an attorney? Well, there’s two ways or few ways. I’m going to go through two just to start. Number one, according to the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act statute, if you prevail in your domestic violence action, the court has to award attorney’s fees. And so if your attorney has billed 7, 8, 9, $10,000 in representing you, the court will force the other side to pay that.

And sometimes you can hire an attorney if your case is strong enough on the, I don’t want to say contingency, but he’ll take the case believing he’s going to get those funds from the other side. Or if it’s part of a divorce, he can wrap it all up in the divorce. So even if you don’t prevail in the restraining order, you can say, all right, well look, we’ll do it in the divorce. And when you get your equitable distribution from the divorce, we’ll take it out of that somehow. All right. But another way, and this is really overlooked and I hate it because it’s out there and you need to know about this. It’s called the Victims of Crime Compensation Office, VCCO, Victims of Crime Compensation Office. If you are a victim of domestic violence, you need to know about these guys. And they have a website. You can Google it. Victims of Crime Compensation Office in New Jersey, if you are a victim of domestic violence, get in touch with them and they will give you money to protect yourself.

They’ll give you sometimes up to $15,000 just so you can maybe rent a place or you can pay for food so that you don’t feel like you have to stay with this guy in order to be provided for. They’ll provide you with money on a temporary basis so you can get out of that situation. And on top of that, they’ll give you up to another $10,000 to hire an attorney with. And I’ve worked with these guys, I mean, they’ve sent me money to hire cases, and women who are dirt poor have been able to afford my services because of that. Now, here’s the thing. You got to go to the police first though. You have to go to the cops and you have to make a report to show that you’re a victim of domestic violence and have the criminal charges issued against your abuser, or at least something that evidences it as well as the restraining order. Because if you just go to them and say, look, I need some funds for an attorney. I’m thinking about bringing an action for domestic violence. They’re not going to do it.

You got to go to the cops first. But once you do that, you can call me up and I can talk you through how to do it. We’ll get you in touch with the VCCO and we’ll get you the funding. So the point is, don’t let a lack of money ever stop you from getting an attorney. You are way better off with an attorney, especially if the other side has one, than you are without one, and it’s going to be free to you, so you might as well take advantage of it. All right? Okay. This is one of my longest videos. I apologize, but it’s such an important topic. I hope you understand. So again, if you are a victim of domestic violence, and you want to talk more about this, guys, just give me a call, please. I don’t want you to be at a home scared for your life thinking that you can’t afford an attorney. Just call my office.

Or alternatively, like I said, a lot of folks are wrongly accused of this by people who are just trying to get an advantage in divorce proceedings or get an advantage in terms of child custody, because there is, if a restraining order issues, that does create a presumption against custody for the person who is the assailant. All right? And if you’re wrongfully accused of this, go ahead and give me a call. All right? And I’ll see what I can do to help you. And again, if you’ve abused your wife or abused your spouse or abused somebody else and you need an attorney, well congratulations, you’ve got 28 minutes here of free advice I just gave you and go hire somebody else. And that’s all I have to say to you. So anyway, guys, listen, thanks for watching this video. And again, please, if you’re a victim of domestic violence, please resolve not to be a victim and just give me a call and I’ll do everything I can to help you out.

All right, guys, take care, and God bless.”