Start with your own order, not your memory of it. The places a stay-away term covers, and the distance, are whatever your judge checked and wrote in, not a fixed statewide rule. If the wording is still genuinely unclear after you read it carefully, the lawful way to resolve it is to ask the court, not the protected person.

Read your order’s stay-away item first

California’s no-contact and stay-away orders are built the same way on the Judicial Council forms: a blank where the judge writes a number of yards, and boxes for the people and places that distance covers. On the current criminal protective order (form CR-160, item 16), the order says the “defendant must stay at least” that many yards away from whichever choices are checked: the protected person; the protected person’s home, job or workplace, or vehicle; other protected persons; or another location the court writes in. The civil domestic violence restraining order after hearing (form DV-130, also item 16) adds boxes for the protected person’s school and the children’s school or child care, and the temporary civil order (form DV-110) has the same list at item 12. The civil-order statute authorizes an order against “coming within a specified distance of” the other party, leaving the number to the court. Then read the exceptions item that follows it, which can allow child exchanges or court-ordered visits.

The distance is the number written on your order

Neither Family Code section 6320 nor the order forms set a standard distance; the judge fills in the blank. The figure of 100 yards is common because the form a protected person uses to ask for a civil domestic violence order (form DV-100, item 12) offers “100 yards (300 feet)” as a pre-printed choice, next to a box for a different number. What binds you is the number actually written on your order, not a figure you have heard elsewhere.

A place your order does not list is not covered by the stay-away term on its own. But if the protected person is one of the checked choices, you must keep the ordered distance from that person wherever they are, including at a place the order never names, and the order’s other terms, such as any ban on following the protected person, still apply.

If a specific place is still genuinely unclear

Real ambiguity gets resolved by the court. The path depends on the kind of order:

  • Civil domestic violence restraining order after hearing (DV-130). Both sides may use Judicial Council form DV-300, “Request to Change or End Restraining Order,” to ask the judge to change specific orders. The form’s own example is the stay-away order: you identify it by name and say what you want it changed to. Stay-away orders issued after a hearing remain subject to modification by further court order on a party’s motion (Family Code section 6345(a)), and when the restrained person asks, the protected person must be given notice by personal service or, in some cases, by service on the Secretary of State (section 6345(d)). You cannot serve the papers yourself; an adult who is not you and is not listed on the order must do it (form DV-300-INFO). If you are the restrained person, nothing changes until the protected person is served and the court holds a hearing on your request (DV-300, item 3b(4)). The form does not cover a temporary order (DV-110); for that, the information sheet points you to a lawyer or the court’s self-help center.
  • Criminal protective order (CR-160). A pretrial order “remains in effect until further court order,” and the court ends one with a separate form, CR-165. Any change goes through the criminal court in your case, and the CR-160 form itself has a “Modification” box for a changed order. Ask your criminal defense lawyer to raise the specific ambiguity with the judge rather than guessing.

What not to do while you wait for clarity

  • Do not contact the protected person, directly or through someone else, to ask what a location means. That is its own contact, and it changes nothing: under the form’s instructions to officers, a protected person’s consent does not suspend the order, and only another court order can change it.
  • Do not treat an unclear term as permission to go somewhere. Until the order is clarified or changed, the safer practical course, not a legal requirement, is to stay away from anywhere your order’s wording could plausibly reach.
  • Do not count on explaining the ambiguity after the fact. What happens once a violation is charged is a separate question (see the firm’s pages on a protective order violation and on contempt); resolving real doubt through the court first is safer.

Practical checklist

  • Pull your current order and read the stay-away item line by line: which boxes are checked, what distance is filled in, and what exceptions follow.
  • Identify which type of order you have (civil order after hearing, temporary civil order, or criminal protective order), since the request process differs.
  • If a place genuinely is not addressed, file DV-300 for a civil order after hearing, or ask your criminal defense lawyer to raise it in the criminal case.
  • Keep a copy of whatever the court signs once the term is clarified or changed, and carry it with you.

Every order is worded a little differently, and a reading that seems obvious to you may not be how a judge or officer would read it. For help reading your order’s stay-away terms and asking the court to clarify them, call the Law Offices of David S. Chesley at (800) 755-5174.