I have had an ex parte order against me for a year. My attorney and I went before a judge to allow it to expire on the expiration date, contested by the other side’s attorney. My attorney showed the judge the statue under which the ex parte was to expire. The judge refused to allow it to expire and set the DV trial date for 4/18/11; 14 months from the incident from which the DV and restraining order took place.
#1. If it is a law that the order is expired after one year and no trial has been heard, how can the judge ignore that? What good would an appeal do? Is it common that an order’s expiration is not allowed to expire if the case has not been heard? I do not know what is “common knowledge” in the courtroom or if my lawyer fully expected it to become expired.
#2. The judge criticized the lawyers for kicking this can way down the road past its’ 10 day hearing and yet I know that the court’s calender routinely failed to set my trial for a date due to “pre-empts.” There is no family law court in Carteret County which I believe is part of the problem but how do I make someone take responsibility for my removal from my childrens’ lives for over a year, seeing them from 4:00pm to bed time one day a week. All, I might add, on a false accusation with no prior abuse record, no record at all on me, no DUI, etc.
The statue allows the court to renew the order upon good cause, and the statute specifically says that the defendant need not have violated the provisions in order to renew the order. The DV does not and has not prevented you from being able to file a regular custody action and set a temporary hearing for custody.
A DV was filed on me. At the same time, she filed a Chapter 50. We answered the Chapter 50 in due course but the DV, and the restraining order attached has been continued 14 times, 12 times by her lawyer. The restraining order was renewed on 3/9/11 although my attorney made a case for allowing it to expire. The judge simply allowed it to continue until the trial date set by the judge on 4/18/11. I was told early on by my attorney that the courts did not like to hear custody matters when it was tied to a DV charge. But that is what we now have. How could I have averted this 14 month long restraining order if the other side continues the case and the “pre-empts” on the court calender are not allowing for trial time when my case is only months old, as some of the pre-empts are years. We finally went to mediation on 2/23/11 with no results. Could this mediation been entered into earlier?
There is no family court system in Carteret County…is that part of the problem?
I don’t know the specifics of how Carteret County runs, and do not know how they schedule their meditations.