Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California
"My husband's ex-wife is threatening to put a restraining order on me because I texted her! Please help."
My husband and I have been together for 10 years and Ive been raising his daughter from a previous marriage as my own this whole time. She lives with us and her mother visits sparingly and does not pay us child support. Just recently, after ten long stressful years of keeping my mouth shut about the mothers behavior, I had had enough and decided to text her basically stating that I am tired of her talking about me in a potentially damaging way since I am the primary caregiver to the child and how she is neglectful of our child. I said many true, although not nice things she does, but without any curse words or threats of bodily harm at all. She did ask me to stop texting her because she felt I was harrassing her but I honestly felt she was overreacting and just saying that because she didnt want to answer my accusations. All in all, I only wrote a total of four short messages to her. She is the kind of person who is always in trouble with the law with arrests and warrants in her past while I have nothing on my record. Would a judge seriously grant her a restraining order against me and if it somehow does go through, how does that affect me in the future?
3 Answers from Attorneys
Nothing I can do to help you other than tell you not to make any other contact with her, in any form. If you think that hiring an attorney now to contact her properly, to convey your apology, and try to persuade her not to file charges, feel free to contact me, not her. Or, if she files, I'll help you defend against the charges and RO.
You do need to stop texting this woman, if only because texting her does not do you any good, and because she asked.
As to whether a court would issue an order against you, everything depends on what you said in the texts, how she responded, how close together the texts were, and a number of other facts. The more time that passes without you texting her, the stronger your case becomes. The lack of threats is definitely something the court would use to justify not issuing a protective order. I cannot tell you what I think a judge would do in your particular case, however, without analyzing all the facts in your situation.
I agree with Mr. Perry, but based on what you have provided it does not sound as though you have presented a credible case of bodily harm or threat to her.
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