Legal Question in Criminal Law in Michigan

The practice that I have seen in my county is that it can go both ways. In a small percentage of cases, at the end of the probation period the defendant appears before the court and is formally told that probation is being terminated successfully and the case is dismissed. A court order to that effect will follow. But in most cases, it is handled administratively (papers are processed without a defendant seeing it happen in court) ... and then the situation you described arises. My advice is a common sense one: if having a clean record is so important (which it is), and the person got the benefit of participating in HYTA to keep a clean record, and the defendant thinks he completed things successfully to gain the benefit of HYTA ... then the defendant should be proactive and get a copy of the court's paperwork proving that the case was dismissed at the end.