Criminal Defense / Family Court
In short
Violating an order of protection is prosecuted as criminal contempt. Second degree contempt under Penal Law 215.50(3) is a class A misdemeanor carrying up to 364 days. It becomes a class E felony where the conduct involves threats, repeated contact, physical contact, property damage over 250 dollars, or a prior contempt conviction within five years, and a class D felony where physical injury results. Arrest is mandatory for a stay away violation, and the protected person cannot consent to contact.
Criminal contempt is the crime of disobeying a court. In practice, the overwhelming majority of criminal contempt cases in New York are order of protection violations, charged under Penal Law 215.50(3): intentional disobedience or resistance to the lawful process or other mandate of a court.
The elements are narrow and that is what makes these cases dangerous. The People must prove a lawful order existed, that you knew about it, and that you intentionally disobeyed it. Nothing about the underlying relationship, the reason for the contact, or how minor it was appears in that list.
| Charge | Class | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal contempt 2nd, PL 215.50 | Class A misdemeanor | 364 days |
| Criminal contempt 1st, PL 215.51 | Class E felony | 4 years |
| Aggravated criminal contempt, PL 215.52 | Class D felony | 7 years |
Second degree contempt covers more than protective orders. It also reaches disorderly behavior in the courtroom, refusing to be sworn as a witness, disobeying a jury commissioner’s mandate, and publishing a grossly inaccurate report of a proceeding. Labor disputes are carved out.
This is where people are caught out, because the misdemeanor and the felony can arise from the same phone call. Penal Law 215.51 raises the charge to a class E felony in several ways:
Aggravated criminal contempt under PL 215.52 adds physical injury. Intentionally or recklessly causing physical injury or serious physical injury to a protected person is a class D felony, as is repeating first degree contempt after a prior conviction for it within five years.
The threshold for the felony is low. Repeated calls, an unwanted shove, or a broken phone can each carry it.
Yes, in the situations that matter most, and the officer has no discretion. CPL 140.10(4) directs that an officer shall arrest, and shall not attempt to reconcile the parties or mediate, where there is reasonable cause to believe that:
There is a separate rule for a misdemeanor family offense that is not an order violation: arrest is mandatory there too unless the victim requests otherwise, and the officer is forbidden to ask the victim whether they want an arrest or to threaten arrest in order to discourage calls for help.
Read those two rules against each other. The victim-request exception applies to the misdemeanor family offense provision. It does not appear in the stay away provision. That is the statutory answer to the question everyone asks next.
No. An order of protection is a mandate of the court, not an agreement between two people. The person protected by it did not issue it and cannot suspend, waive or cancel it. Only the issuing court can modify or vacate an order.
This produces the most common criminal contempt case in New York: the protected party invites the defendant back, calls, texts, or turns up, and the defendant is arrested for responding. The invitation is not a defense to intentional disobedience of a court mandate, and as shown above, an officer responding to a stay away violation is required to make the arrest whatever the complainant now wants.
Consent is not entirely irrelevant. It can bear on whether the People can prove the act happened, whether the conduct actually fell within the order’s terms, and how the case resolves. It is not permission. If circumstances have changed, the remedy is a motion to modify the order, made to the court that issued it, before the contact happens.
More than a conversation. A full stay away order typically bars the defendant from the protected person’s home, school, business and place of employment, and from communication by any means. That reaches text messages, email, social media messages, comments and tags, and messages passed through a third party. Asking a relative or friend to deliver a message is still contact.
Read the order itself rather than assuming, because these orders are not uniform. A full stay away order and a limited order permitting contact except for offensive conduct are very different documents, and both are called orders of protection.
Yes, in defined circumstances, and contempt is one of the few misdemeanors where that is true. Under the qualifying offense list in CPL 510.10(4), bail may be set where the charge is second degree criminal contempt under PL 215.50(3), first degree criminal contempt under subdivision (b), (c) or (d) of PL 215.51, or aggravated criminal contempt, and the allegation is that the defendant violated a duly served order of protection where the protected party is a member of the defendant’s same family or household.
Both halves are required. A contempt charge involving some other court mandate, or an order protecting someone outside that relationship, is not a qualifying offense simply because it is called contempt. For how securing orders work generally, see the guide on bail and securing orders.
Not if the first proceeding was punitive. This is settled by People v Wood, 95 NY2d 509 (2000), and it is a genuinely useful decision.
Wood’s former wife held two orders of protection, one from City Court and one from Family Court. He made eleven prank phone calls. Family Court found a willful violation and sentenced him to six months. The People then indicted him for first degree criminal contempt based on the same five traced calls and the City Court order.
The Court of Appeals barred the prosecution. A Family Court contempt adjudication under Family Court Act 846-a is punitive, not merely coercive, because it imposes a definite term of imprisonment for disobeying a past order. The Family Court provision is a lesser included offense of PL 215.51(c). And the fact that the criminal charge rested on a different court’s order made no difference: “The People cannot circumvent the double jeopardy bar simply by seeking to prosecute the criminal action for violation of another court order based on the same conduct.”
The practical lesson is about sequencing. Because criminal court and Family Court have concurrent jurisdiction over family offenses, and a complainant may start proceedings in either or both, what happens first can determine what can happen at all.
They can arrive before any conviction. Under CPL 530.14, when a criminal court issues a temporary order of protection it must ask the defendant and prosecutor about firearms, and must suspend any license, declare the defendant ineligible and order immediate surrender where there is good cause to believe the defendant has a prior violent felony conviction, a prior willful order violation involving injury, a weapon or violent felony conduct, or a prior stalking conviction. The same follows on a finding of substantial risk.
Family Court has parallel authority. Under FCA 846-a, where a willful violation involves menacing, reckless endangerment, assault or attempted assault, the court may revoke a firearms license, and where it involves physical injury or the use or threatened use of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, revocation and surrender are mandatory.
Federal law is separate. 18 USC 922(g)(8) bars firearm possession by a person subject to a qualifying order issued after notice and a hearing that restrains harassing, stalking or threatening an intimate partner or their child, and that either contains a credible threat finding or expressly prohibits the use of force. The Supreme Court upheld that provision in United States v Rahimi, 602 US 680 (2024). Not every New York order meets the federal test, so the terms of your particular order matter.
| Source | Issued in |
|---|---|
| Criminal court order, CPL 530.12 or 530.13 | A pending criminal case, temporary, or final at sentencing |
| Family Court order, FCA article 8 | A family offense petition, no criminal case required |
| Supreme Court order, DRL 240 or 252 | A divorce or matrimonial action |
All three can support a contempt charge, along with orders issued by courts of another state, territory or tribal jurisdiction. The order must have been duly served, or you must have actual knowledge of it because you were in court when it was issued. Service or presence is an element, not a technicality, and it is often where these cases are won.
Criminal contempt charges are arraigned at Nassau County District Court, 99 Main Street in Hempstead, which handles misdemeanors and holds preliminary jurisdiction over felonies. Felony contempt matters move up to Nassau County Court at 262 Old Country Road in Mineola, and in some cases to Supreme Court, Nassau County.
Family Court violation petitions go to Nassau County Family Court at 101 County Seat Drive in Mineola. The court moved into that complex in June 2025, so directions published earlier point at the wrong building.
A single incident in Nassau County can therefore generate a criminal case in Hempstead and a violation petition in Mineola at the same time. Given Wood, that overlap is not just an inconvenience. It is strategy.
Related: orders of protection, bail and securing orders, assault in the third degree, and Nassau County Family Court.
This guide is general information about New York law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and penalties change, and how the law applies depends on facts no webpage knows. Check the linked primary source, and speak with a lawyer about your own case.
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