If you are in immediate danger, call 911 first. A family restraining order is the civil order that follows — a court telling a former partner to stay away from you and your children, enforceable by police, and breachable only at the cost of a criminal charge.
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Under the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90f03">Family Law Act</a>, you can apply for a restraining order against a spouse, a former spouse, or a person you are living with or have lived with. You do not need to be married, you do not need a police report, and you do not need the other person to have been charged with anything. Many orders are made where no criminal process exists at all.
What you must show is reasonable grounds to fear for your own safety or the safety of any child in your lawful custody. That is an objective test applied to your actual circumstances — the history between you, what has been said, what has been done before. It is not a requirement of proven violence, and it is not satisfied by dislike, anger about the separation, or a difficult negotiation.
There is a separate route under the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90c12">Children's Law Reform Act</a>, which allows a restraining order against any person, not only a spouse, former spouse or someone you have lived with. The test is the same — reasonable grounds to fear for your own safety or the safety of any child in your lawful custody — and the order can restrain contact with you or the child and coming within a specified distance of named locations.
Both the Ontario Court of Justice and the Superior Court of Justice can make these orders, so the application goes wherever your family matter already is. It can be brought on its own or alongside claims for parenting time, decision-making responsibility and support. Bringing it with the rest of the file usually saves time, but do not let a broader negotiation delay an order you need now.
A peace bond comes from the criminal court and requires the person to keep the peace for a fixed period. Bail conditions come from a criminal charge and end when the charge does — a withdrawal or an acquittal takes the no-contact condition with it. Neither is a substitute for a family restraining order, and people are caught out by this every year.
A family restraining order is a civil order made in your family proceeding, on your evidence, for a duration the court sets. It survives the outcome of any criminal case because it never depended on one. If a criminal charge against your former partner is resolving, that is the moment to check whether anything still protects you.
Breaching a family restraining order is a criminal offence. Police can arrest, and the breach is prosecuted in the criminal courts rather than treated as a private dispute for you to enforce. That is what makes it useful — enforcement does not depend on you bringing a motion, hiring a lawyer, and waiting for a court date every time something happens.
It is also not a parenting order. A restraining order controls contact with you; it does not decide who the children live with or when the other parent sees them. Those need their own order, drafted so the two do not contradict each other. A restraining order that forbids all contact while a parenting order requires weekly exchanges is a trap for everyone, including the police.
The officer at your door will read the order and act on what it says. "Do not harass the applicant" is close to useless. Named addresses, a stated distance to stay back, specific workplaces and schools, and an explicit ban on contact by phone, text, email, social media and through third parties are what make an order enforceable on the spot.
Build in the exceptions you actually need, or the order will be breached by ordinary life. If there are children, say exactly how exchanges happen, where, and through whom. Say whether written communication about the children is permitted and by what method. An order with no workable carve-out for parenting gets varied, ignored, or both.
Where waiting to give notice would put you at risk, the application can be brought urgently without notice to the other side. The court will set an early return date so they can respond, and your material has to be complete and honest — an order obtained on an incomplete picture does not survive that return date.
Bring dates. A chronological log of incidents, screenshots with timestamps, photographs, medical records, prior police occurrence numbers, and the names of anyone who witnessed something. Specific and dated beats general and emphatic every time, because a judge is deciding on paper. Our <a href="/family">family law</a> team scopes this work in writing before it starts.
No. A family restraining order is a civil order in a family proceeding and does not require a charge, a conviction, or even a police report. Police involvement helps as evidence, because occurrence numbers and officer notes are dated and independent. But the absence of it is not a bar, and many orders are made without any criminal file.
Yes. The Family Law Act route covers a spouse, a former spouse, and a person you are living with or have lived with, so marriage is not required. Where the concern is contact with a child rather than with you, the Children's Law Reform Act allows an order against a wider range of people, including relatives and non-partners.
Call police. Breaching a family restraining order is a criminal offence, so police can arrest and the matter is prosecuted criminally rather than left to you. Keep the order with you, give a copy to your local police service, and record the date, time and details of every breach — enforcement follows evidence, and vague reports go nowhere.
Not by itself. A restraining order protecting you does not decide parenting. It can be extended to protect a child in your lawful custody where the test is met, but who the children live with and when the other parent sees them are separate orders. Those need to be drafted together so the terms do not contradict each other.
The court sets the duration, which may be a fixed period or open-ended depending on the circumstances. Either party can later ask the court to vary or terminate it if there is a material change. Do not assume it lapses when a related criminal charge ends, or when a separation agreement is signed — check the wording of the order itself.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.