announcements

Visit Our Mission page to view a new video that shares a bit about FVAP’s work and thanks you, our supporters, for helping us make justice for survivors possible.

Special thanks to videographer, Glenn Mercado, for creating this video and volunteering his time!

Tanguilig v. Valdez (2019) ____ Cal.App. ______ was just published, and it is a big win for survivors asking to include family and household members as protected persons on their restraining order. In this case, the Court of Appeal held that “good cause” as it pertains to adding family and household members to a protective order, “includes reasons that are fair, honest, in good faith, not trivial, arbitrary, capricious, or pretextual, and reasonably related to legitimate needs, goals, and purposes.” Although this case involved an elder abuse restraining order, this ruling can still be helpful to survivors who want to protect their family and household members as part of their restraining order because the laws are very similar so it is appropriate to ask a judge to look at an elder abuse case when making a decision about a domestic violence restraining order. FVAP obtained publication of this case.

We’ve reached a new victory for abuse survivors seeking a domestic violence restraining order on the basis of a violated temporary restraining order. In this case, the Court of Appeal overturned the trial court’s denial of the domestic violence restraining order request. In doing so, the Court of Appeal ruled that a violation of a temporary restraining order constitutes abuse under Family Code section 6203(a)(4). The Court of Appeal also held that the conduct underlying the violations constituted abuse under Family Code section 6320. We hope that this will make getting a long-term restraining order easier for the many abuse survivors who need it.

Read the published opinion here.

We’re happy to share that in a recent published opinion, SY v. Superior Court, 29 Cal. App 5^th 324 (2018), English language fluency can no longer be used as a reason to grant custody. While we do disagree with the portion of this ruling that still granted joint custody to S.Y.’s abuser, this court ruling is an important win for non-English speakers and immigrant survivors of domestic violence, who face discrimination based on their English language fluency.

We are excited to announce that after collaborating with Pro Bono Training Institute on a year-long project to include training modules on Domestic Violence Restraining Order Requests (DVROs) on their website, the modules are now up!

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