When Can An Order For Protection (OFP) Be Filed In Minnesota?

In this article, you will learn:

• How access to children can be affected by abuse allegations
• When orders of protections are placed
• How to stop an abusive parent from accessing their children

When there is a domestic assault, there is no magician that comes out from behind the curtains and does anything. One of the parties has to call 911, ask to get the police involved, or maybe it’s a neighbor. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one of the parties, but somebody needs to do something. Once police get involved, they can make an arrest, and once an arrest is made, generally what happens is that the prosecutor in a criminal case will file a Domestic Assault No Contact Order, or DANCO. That DANCO is something that is put in place by the prosecutor, so that’s part of the criminal case. A violation of it can be criminal, but it’s the prosecutor that is in charge of that process.

Typically, what I’ll see is that the victims of the domestic violence will go to the prosecutor and say, “you know what? I don’t want this order in place. Get rid of this DANCO.We need to talk, we need to be able to work things out,” so that DANCO gets dropped. As the cycle of violence continues on, something happens between the parties. There is another instance of domestic abuse, and at that point, maybe there is not an arrest, it’s still a serious situation, but the victim is put in a place where she doesn’t want to go to the police because for whatever reason, she doesn’t want him to get into trouble. That’s just something that happens, and it’s something that we see which is not uncommon at all.

But it’s at that point that we want to look at an order for protection and an order for protection generally doesn’t have a cost to it. A lot of times, any of our domestic abuse advocates or advocacy centers will help in getting those orders of protection put together and get them before the court, but it’s important to understand that DANCO is a separate process than the order for protection,and those are both different from the restraining order which is generally a harassment restraining order. So, there are three different types of orders that would keep somebody away from a domestic abuse victim, and they are used in different circumstances and different situations.

Still, they are all valid orders,but they are not always put in place. It’s just one of the things to consider when there is domestic violence in the relationship.

How Access To Children May Be Affected If Domestic Violence Accusations Were Made Against You?

The domestic violence, if it’s between the parties and the children were not involved in that, it’s very likely that the offender or the person who is alleged to have committed those offenses will still have access to the children. That parent-child relationship is overly important, even if there is abuse between the parties. Now, if there was something that happened against the children, it may happen that they don’t have access to the children, but that’s very specific to what happened in a parent-child relationship as opposed to what happened between the parties.

What To Do To Stop An Abusive Spouse From Seeing The Children?

If the abuse was solely between the parties, the courts are going to want the other person to have that parent-child relationship remain, and they aren’t going to want to keep that person from seeing the children. Depending on the circumstances, we might ask for supervised parenting time, where the other parent, the abusive parent, would only see the children at a parenting time center where they are paying for the time of the staff there or with another family member. There are other resources and options as well, but it depends on the case.

For more information on Order Of Protection In A Minnesota Divorce, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (763) 284-5552 today.