Is my sister-in-law legally allowed to video tape an exchange between myself and my mother-in-law?

It depends upon how reasonable an expectation of privacy by you in that location is. You should review all of the facts and prior orders with a family law attorney to determine how best for you to proceed.

Not if the order did not include the right to record conversations with your mother in law. You had better read the terms of the TRO very carefully.

So long as a video recording is not being used for commercial purposes and is not being done in a place at which you have no expectation that something might be recorded (like, for example, she can't videotape you in the chair at your dentist's office, even if the room is visible from the sidewalk outside). Yeah, police stations are fair game.

Hiding is not good and sounds not contemplated by the order. Get order that precludes recording of exchange. No one wants that.

That sounds like a violation of illegal wire tapping.

California's wiretapping law is a "two-party consent" law. California makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on any confidential communication, including a private conversation or telephone call, without the consent of *all parties to the conversation*. See Cal. Penal Code ? 632. The statute applies to "confidential communications" i.e., conversations in which one of the parties has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is listening in or overhearing the conversation. See Flanagan v. Flanagan, 41 P.3d 575, 576-77, 578-82 (Cal. 2002). A California appellate court has ruled that this statute applies to the use of hidden video cameras to record conversations as well. See California v. Gibbons, 215 Cal. App. 3d 1204 (Cal Ct. App. 1989).