You asked: If there is a protective order in place and the person it is against comes into the residence and takes a gun, is there any legal justice to be done?Additional Details:I filed a protective order in Feb of 2012 against my soon to be ex husband. He knew the protective order was in place but it stated clearly in the order it did not affect his parental time with the children. He came to the marital residence for parenting time. A few weeks later I had to have him arrested on violation of the protective order. As I am going through things in the house I have discovered he took one of our guns. When I questioned him about it he said he took so he could sell it for money. Is this something that I need to inform the judge about? I am a little concerned and I did not know if there was anything I could do. We technically are not allowed to remove anything from the house until assets have been divided.
I am a Michigan attorney, and would recommend that you discuss this with a local attorney; however, I may be able to give you some guidance. First, if you have an attorney, you should call your attorney to discuss this. Second, you should check the Protection Order. In Michigan, most Protection Orders prohibit the defendant from possessing a gun. If your Order has that provision, then he is in violation of the order. Third, you indicate that the Order prohibits him from entering the home, but allows him to exercise parenting time. If the Order does not provide that he gets to exercise parenting time in the home, then he could exercise parenting time somewhere else. If you let him in the home, then it is unlikely the court would violate him, but if you tell him that in the future he should exercise parenting time somewhere else, then he no longer should be in the home. Fifth, it there is an order that prohibit him from taking items from the home, or if there is an order that prohibits either of you from selling items without the agreement of both parties, then he is in violation of that order, and you should so advise the Court.
Stu Shafer
Answered on Apr 03rd, 2012 at 5:41 PM