PROTECTION ORDERS & NEVADA FAMILY LAW

Nevada Restraining Orders: How to Get a TPO and What to Do When One Is Filed Against You

Whether you need protection from someone today, or you just got served and your hands are still shaking, a Nevada restraining order runs on a schedule set by law, and the next 45 days follow it. This guide walks both roads: how to get a TPO in Clark County step by step, and what to do, and not do, when one has been filed against you.

Nevada Restraining Order Basics: The Five Types of Protection Orders

The first thing to understand about a Nevada restraining order is that the statute books do not use that phrase. Nevada law calls them protection orders, and it has several distinct kinds, each with its own statute, court, and rules. Filing the wrong type is one of the most common reasons applications get rejected, so start here:

Most of this guide focuses on the domestic violence protection order, because it is the most common, the fastest to obtain, and the one that intersects with divorce and custody cases. If your situation involves a neighbor or a stranger, the process is similar but runs through justice court under the stalking and harassment statute.

What Counts as Domestic Violence Under Nevada Law

To qualify for a domestic violence protection order, two things must be true: the relationship qualifies, and the conduct qualifies.

The relationship

Under NRS 33.018, domestic violence occurs between people who are or were married, are related by blood or marriage, are or were in a dating relationship, have a child together, or live or lived together, as well as violence against a person's minor child or by a person's legal guardian.

The conduct

The conduct does not have to be a punch. Nevada law recognizes domestic violence in a battery or assault, but also in coercion, sexual assault, and a knowing, purposeful or reckless course of conduct intended to harass, which includes stalking, arson, trespassing, larceny, destruction of private property, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, injuring or killing an animal, burglary, and home invasion.

Two practical points from the courtroom. First, threats count: you do not have to wait to be hit. Second, judges look for specific incidents with dates, not general descriptions like "he is always aggressive." When you fill out the application, write it like a police report: date, place, what was said, what was done, who saw it.

How to Get a TPO in Clark County: Step by Step

Step 1: If you are in immediate danger, call 911 first

A protection order is a piece of paper with consequences attached. It is not a shield in an emergency. If something is happening right now, police first, paperwork second. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is also available around the clock at 1-800-799-7233.

Step 2: Go to the TPO Office or apply online

In Clark County, applications for domestic violence protection orders go through the TPO Office at the Family Courts and Services Center, 601 N. Pecos Road, Las Vegas. You can also complete the forms online through the Nevada courts self-help center at selfhelp.nvcourts.gov, which walks you through the application question by question. Advocates at the courthouse can help you prepare the paperwork at no charge.

Step 3: Write the application with specifics

Your application is a sworn statement. Include the most recent incident first, with the date and what happened, then the worst incident, then the pattern. Attach photos of injuries or property damage, threatening texts, and voicemails if you have them. The judge who reviews your application will likely never meet you before deciding, so the paper has to do the talking.

Step 4: A judge reviews it, often the same day

Temporary protection orders are decided ex parte, which means without the other person present or even notified. If the judge finds your application shows an act of domestic violence or a credible threat, the TPO issues. Nevada law requires a decision within one judicial day of a complete application, and in Clark County it frequently happens the same day you apply. If the abuser has just been arrested for domestic violence, you do not have to wait for business hours: in counties of Clark County's size, a judge must be available around the clock to issue a temporary order while the person is still in custody.

Step 5: Law enforcement serves the order

The TPO has no legal effect on the other person until they are served. Law enforcement serves protection orders at no cost to you. Keep a copy with you at all times, and give copies to your children's school or daycare if the order covers the kids.

Step 6: Calendar the expiration date

A TPO lasts up to 45 days. Be careful with older articles on this topic: the Nevada Legislature extended these periods, and pages still circulating say 30 days and one year. Current law is 45 days for the temporary order and up to two years for the extended order. If law enforcement cannot serve the adverse party in time, or the adverse party is hiding to avoid service, the court can postpone the extension hearing rather than let your protection lapse. If you need protection past the TPO, you must request an extended order, which triggers a hearing. Do not let the TPO quietly expire because the immediate crisis passed; if the underlying danger is still there, file for the extension well before day 45.

The Extension Hearing: Turning 45 Days Into Two Years

An extended protection order can last up to two years, but unlike the TPO, it is not granted on paperwork alone. The court sets a hearing, both sides are notified, both sides can appear, testify, present evidence, and cross-examine. This is the first moment in the process where the case becomes adversarial, and it is where preparation decides outcomes.

If you are the applicant: bring the evidence you referenced in your application, in printed form, with copies for the court and the other side. Bring witnesses who saw incidents firsthand. Practice telling the story in chronological order. The hearing is short, often under an hour, and the judge is deciding whether the danger is ongoing, not just whether something happened once.

A pattern we see constantly: picture a mother who gets a TPO after a frightening weekend, and by week four things have been quiet, so the hearing date on the calendar starts to feel like reopening a wound she would rather leave closed. She skips it, the order expires, and the quiet ends with it, except now the next application has to explain why she let the last order lapse. Quiet during a TPO usually means the order is working, not that it is unnecessary. If the underlying danger was real, go to the hearing.

If you are the adverse party: this hearing is your first real chance to be heard, and skipping it is how a 45-day order becomes a two-year order by default. More on your side of the table in the next section.

The extended order is also a more powerful instrument than the TPO. Beyond stay-away and no-contact terms, an extended order can require the adverse party to pay child support, make rent or mortgage payments on your home, cover your court costs, set a supervised visitation schedule for the children, and surrender firearms to law enforcement or a licensed dealer within 24 hours of service. Applicants who treat the extension hearing as a formality leave most of that on the table.

Either way, this is the stage where people hire counsel, because the extended order is the one with long consequences: two years of restrictions, firearm implications, and a record that follows you into any custody or divorce proceeding.

A TPO Was Filed Against You: What to Do Now

Getting served with a Nevada restraining order, usually a TPO, is disorienting, especially when the application tells a story you do not recognize. What you do in the first 48 hours matters more than almost anything you do later. Here is the discipline:

Understand what the order is, and is not

A TPO is a civil order, not a criminal charge or a conviction. It was granted based only on the applicant's sworn statement, without your side, because that is how the statute is designed to work. Judges grant them readily on purpose: the law would rather issue an order that proves unnecessary than deny one that proves fatal. Do not treat the TPO as proof the court believes everything in the application. Treat the extension hearing as the place your side gets told.

Obey the order completely, starting now

Read every line. If it says no contact, that means no calls, no texts, no emails, no messages passed through friends or family, no "liking" posts, no showing up. If it excludes you from the home, do not go back for your belongings without following the order's procedure for retrieving them, usually a civil standby with police.

Do not respond if the applicant contacts you

This is the trap that catches more people than any other. The protection order binds you, not the applicant. If they text you, invite you over, or say they want to drop the order, and you respond, you have violated the order and they have not. Violating a TPO is a crime in Nevada, and a violation arrest right before your extension hearing is catastrophic. Save the messages, tell your attorney, say nothing.

Consider how this typically unfolds: a father is served on a Tuesday, and by Friday the applicant is texting him about picking up the kids' school things, sounding like the storm has passed. He drives over because refusing feels hostile, a neighbor mentions it, and now he walks into his extension hearing as someone with a documented violation instead of someone with a clean record and his own side of the story. The invitation was not a trap in her mind, but the order does not care whose idea the contact was. Until a judge dissolves it, the answer to every invitation is no.

Show up to the hearing, prepared

The extension hearing is your opportunity to testify, present your own evidence and witnesses, and cross-examine. If the application contains false or exaggerated claims, this is where you answer them, with texts, receipts, timestamps, location records, and witnesses, not with anger. Judges at these hearings watch demeanor closely: the calm party with documents is more credible than the loud party with grievances.

Understand the collateral consequences before you agree to anything

People sometimes stipulate to an extended order just to end the conflict, without realizing what rides along with it: possible firearm prohibitions, immigration consequences, professional licensing issues, and a domestic violence finding that a family court can weigh against you in a custody case. If children or a divorce are anywhere in the picture, get legal advice before the hearing, not after. If related criminal charges were filed, that is a separate track with its own stakes; see our guide on getting domestic violence charges dismissed in Las Vegas.

How to Dissolve or Modify a Nevada Restraining Order (TPO)

A protection order is not set in stone for its full term. Under Nevada law, the court that issued the order can dissolve it or modify its terms on a motion by either party, with a hearing where both sides are heard. This is the piece most articles skip, and it is often the most urgent one, because TPOs are drafted in an emergency, ex parte, and their standard terms can sweep far wider than the situation requires.

A motion to dissolve asks the court to end the order entirely, typically because the allegations are contested and the evidence does not hold up, or because the circumstances that justified the order no longer exist. A motion to modify is the scalpel instead of the sledgehammer: it leaves the order in place but reshapes its terms, and judges who would not dissolve an order outright will often grant a narrow, practical modification.

Consider the collision that makes modification essential: a parent who teaches at their own child's school. A standard TPO with stay-away terms covering the child's school does not just separate parent and child; it makes going to work a criminal violation. That parent cannot wait 45 days for the extension hearing to sort out contested allegations while their livelihood evaporates. A motion to modify can carve the order so the parent returns to work under defined conditions while the allegations are investigated on their own track. The protection stays; the collateral damage stops.

And contested allegations do get sorted, because the motion hearing is where evidence meets scrutiny. Fabricated claims tend to unravel there: photographs get examined, timelines get cross-referenced, and a child's statements get evaluated for coaching by people trained to recognize it. If you are facing allegations you know are false, the worst move is despair and the second-worst is rage; the right move is a disciplined evidentiary attack, on the motion and at the hearing. Our guide on false accusations in Nevada custody cases covers that fight in depth.

Timing matters in both directions. If you are the adverse party, file promptly: courts respect urgency that matches the claimed harm. If you are the protected party and the adverse party moves to dissolve, take the motion seriously and show up with your evidence, because an order dissolved on motion is harder to replace than one extended at a scheduled hearing.

Protection order cases in Northern Nevada often run alongside a divorce; if you are in Washoe County, our guide to divorce in Reno covers the local filing process, packets, and fees.

How a Protection Order Affects Child Custody

A Nevada restraining order and a custody case are connected by statute. Under NRS 125C.0035, when a court finds by clear and convincing evidence that a parent has committed domestic violence, a rebuttable presumption arises that custody with that parent is not in the child's best interest. In plain terms: a domestic violence finding puts a thumb on the custody scale, and it is a heavy thumb.

This cuts both ways. If you are a protective parent, the TPO and the evidence behind it belong in your custody case, and the timing of filings matters. If you are the accused parent, understand that the extension hearing may effectively be the first round of your custody case, litigated on two weeks' notice. Both situations call for coordination between the protection order and the family case rather than treating them as separate problems. Our guides on child custody in Nevada and what causes a parent to lose custody cover the custody side in depth, and if the marriage itself is ending, see domestic violence and divorce in Nevada.

A TPO can also make temporary arrangements for the children, including temporary custody provisions, which is another reason these orders should never be handled casually by either side.

Violations, Enforcement, and Firearms

Violating a Nevada restraining order is a crime under NRS 33.100. A violation of a temporary order is a misdemeanor, and violations of extended orders carry harsher penalties, with repeat and aggravated violations exposing the violator to felony charges. Police can arrest for a violation on probable cause, and prosecutors in Clark County treat these cases seriously.

Firearms deserve their own paragraph. Nevada law allows the court to prohibit the adverse party from possessing firearms while an extended order is in effect, and federal law separately prohibits firearm possession by a person subject to a qualifying protection order issued after a hearing. If you are served with an order and you own firearms, get specific legal advice immediately about what you must do with them; guessing wrong is a federal problem, not just a state one. If your gun rights were affected by a past order or conviction, our guide on getting your gun rights back after domestic violence explains the road back.

If you hold a protection order and it is violated, call the police, report every violation, and keep a log. Enforcement is only as strong as the record of violations behind it, and that record also matters at any renewal hearing.

Nevada Restraining Order Cost and Timeline in Clark County

The Nevada restraining order filing math is simple and worth stating plainly, because fear of cost keeps people from filing:

An attorney is never required for a protection order, and the TPO Office and court advocates exist precisely so nobody faces this process alone. Where counsel earns its fee is at the contested extension hearing, and anywhere the protection order touches custody, divorce, firearms, or a professional license.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different; consult a licensed Nevada attorney about your specific situation.