Injunctions & Restraining Orders: Answered

Yes — Florida's stalking-injunction statute expressly covers cyberstalking: a course of conduct through electronic communication directed at a specific person causing substantial emotional distress and serving no legitimate purpose. The case is won with the record: screenshots with dates and numbers visible, call logs, platform messages. If an earlier petition was denied, new incidents can support a new petition — bring the judge the pattern, not just the worst message.

You can petition against anyone if the facts fit the right injunction type. Domestic-violence injunctions require a family or household relationship; outside that, Florida offers repeat-violence injunctions (two incidents of violence or stalking, one within six months) and stalking injunctions with no household requirement. The filing is free and the forms are public — but choosing the correct injunction type for the relationship and facts is where petitions live or die.

Temporary injunctions can issue the same day, ex parte, on the petition alone — a deliberately low bar designed for emergencies. The final hearing is where proof matters: sworn testimony, evidence, cross-examination, and a judge deciding whether the statutory grounds are actually met. That two-stage design is why both sides should take the final hearing seriously: petitioners shouldn't assume the temporary order makes the final one automatic, and respondents shouldn't assume the system is rigged — it rewards whoever arrives with evidence.

Call law enforcement every time — violating an injunction is a crime (generally a first-degree misdemeanor), and police can arrest on a violation. Document each incident, keep every message, and report even the "small" contacts: the pattern is what escalates consequences, through criminal prosecution and through contempt in the civil case. An injunction only protects the person who enforces it.

The respondent must be personally served with the temporary injunction and notice of the final hearing — no service, no final injunction. If they're served and don't appear, the hearing proceeds without them and a final injunction can be entered by default. If they can't be located, the temporary order can be extended while service is attempted. Service problems are the most common reason these cases stall; a process server who knows the respondent's patterns fixes most of them.

An injunction stabilizes a crisis; it doesn't resolve a marriage. The injunction court can enter temporary time-sharing and support terms, but the durable answers — a parenting plan, property division, ongoing support — come from a dissolution case. Practically, the injunction and divorce cases run together and must be coordinated: what happens in one shapes the other, and inconsistent positions between the two files is the classic self-inflicted wound.

Enough to take seriously, starting now. The paperwork means a final hearing is days away — typically within 15 days — at which a judge decides whether a final injunction enters. A final injunction is not a slap on the wrist: it can bar you from your home, restrict contact with your children, require firearms surrender, appear in background checks, and set the stage for criminal charges on any violation. Obey the temporary order to the letter (no "just one text"), gather your evidence and witnesses, and get counsel before the hearing — it is a real trial on a short clock.

A final domestic-violence injunction requires surrender of firearms and ammunition and suspends your concealed-carry license for as long as it's in effect, and the injunction is entered into FCIC/NCIC databases where it surfaces on background checks. For anyone with a security clearance, a carry permit, or a profession that requires firearms, this alone justifies fighting an unfounded petition at the final hearing rather than consenting "to make it go away."

They travel separately. A criminal no-contact order (a condition of pretrial release) generally dissolves with the criminal case. A civil injunction does not — it continues until it expires by its terms or a court dissolves it, no matter what happened to the charges. People get arrested every year for violating a civil injunction they assumed died with the dropped case. Read the actual orders; when in doubt, no contact.

Yes. Either party can move to modify or dissolve an injunction, and courts grant dissolution when circumstances have changed such that the injunction no longer serves its purpose — years of compliance, relocation, no continuing fear that's objectively reasonable. It is a motion with evidence, not a formality, and judges vary considerably in what persuades them. An injunction that no longer reflects reality is worth cleaning up: it affects background checks, firearms rights, and sometimes employment.

You generally can't rewrite a police report — but you can beat it. Incident reports are usually inadmissible hearsay; what matters is sworn testimony and admissible evidence at the hearing. The response to a slanted report is preparation: your own testimony, witnesses, messages, and photographs that tell the fuller story, plus cross-examination of the narrative. Judges decide injunctions on what's proven in the courtroom, not on what an officer summarized at the scene.

A temporary injunction can award the petitioner temporary exclusive care of the children with no time-sharing for you until the final hearing — one more reason not to waive that hearing. At the final hearing the court can build time-sharing terms into the injunction (supervised exchanges, third-party pickups, communication limited to a co-parenting app). If the injunction enters, pushing the parenting issues into a proper family case with a full parenting plan is usually better for you than living under injunction-court terms indefinitely.