Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

The way you describe this, it certainly does sound like it should be dismissed, and I don't think you or she should give up hope that it will be just yet. I know it seeks like its been a long time and no one's doing anything, but the reality is that her attorney, the prosecutor, and the court are probably all trying to deal with crowded dockets and just not enough time in the day to deal with everything. Hopefully, that's all that's going on, and maybe by March, the prosecutor will have had time to check things out and will realize this is a bad case and needs to be dismissed.

Obviously, I don't know anything about her attorney, and the odds are he's doing the best he can with this and it should all be okay in the long run. However, here's the "just in case" part--every so often, there will be a defense attorney who for whatever reason just doesn't seem to understand the difference between a case that should be able to be pled out and a case that needs to go to trial. If what you've said here is the whole story (I'm not implying it's not, but sometimes those close to defendants aren't realistically looking at ALL the evidence), then it sounds to me like this is a case that needs to go to trial if she can't get a dismissal. The combination of the brother's history of violence and theft (and apparent general instability), in contrast with her being a nursing student with no history acting to protect her son (and the fact the brother doesn't even want to prosecute) should give her a very good chance if this were to go to trial. I imagine the prosecutor will be able to figure that out, and will dismis it, but you never know. I don't think there's much your girlfriend can do here besides put together a packet of information for her attorney about all of her brother's prior cases and maybe something from the school and nursing board showing she graduated and is set to become licensed, and perhaps a letter of recommendation from a professor she was close to, or something along those lines. I'd like to say her attorney would guide her in putting all that together, but I just don't know--most would, but not all.

Once the case has been dismissed, assuming that happens, she does need to understand that it will stay on her record until she applies for an expunction (which will order the records to be destroyed). Usually, there's a two year wait after the offense date to get a misdemeanor expunged, but in this particular case, it's at least possible they might be sympathetic and agree to expunge it without the wait so she can go ahead and get licensed without a problem. Her court-appointed attorney will not be able to handle that for her, though, because it has to be done as a separate civil case (unless she actually goes to trial and gets acquitted). If she needs help with that, I handle expunctions and I'd be happy to talk to her about her options. Good luck--I'm sorry she and you are having to go through this.