Protective Order Jurisdiction in Oklahoma
A protective order was filed but neither party resides in Oklahoma. What can be done? I’m Oklahoma Attorney James Wirth. That’s the question that we have before us. So it sounds like somebody filed a protective order against somebody in an Oklahoma court even though neither party resides in Oklahoma. It also says that the events related to the allegations did not happen in Oklahoma. So what can be done?
So first off, we want to look at the statute related to protective order jurisdiction. It is titled 22, section 60.2, subsection A1. And what it says is a person seeking relief may file a petition for a protective order within the district court in the county in which the victim resides or the defendant resides or in which the domestic violence occurred. So either the petition person filing for the protective order or the person against the protective order has to reside in the state of Oklahoma and in that particular county or the events leading to it, the domestic violence, the abuse, those things have to have occurred in that county and obviously within the state of Oklahoma. So based on the facts presented here, there is not proper jurisdiction in the state of Oklahoma. So what do you do?
Filing a Motion to Dismiss
You would file a motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. You file that, you set it for hearing and then the judge can take, you know, witness testimony. You can put that on or you can do that by perhaps by affidavit and see if that is not disputed by the other side, asserting that there is no jurisdiction either party resides here and the court should go ahead and dismiss that because the court doesn’t have the authority to hear it. If you’re dealing with that circumstance though, particularly if you’re residing out of state, you’re probably going to want to hire an attorney that is in the state.
Take Action Today
If you want to do that or speak with an attorney with my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
