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• Contact the Police for assistance by dialing 999. The Police may intervene and arrest your spouse or partner if a criminal offence has been committed such as an assault. Even if they do not arrest, their intervention may calm the situation. The action you have taken in informing the police will be convincing evidence should the incident later come before a Court, and will strengthen your claim. Make sure that the police record the incident, and provide you with a crime number.

• You should then consider what further steps are necessary. If the Domestic Violence was one off, and not likely to be repeated, you may decide not to take any further action which might inflame an already difficult situation. However if the Domestic Violence shown was part of a regular pattern, and likely to be repeated, then protection must be obtained, and your spouse or partner’s behaviour placed on the Court record. It should however be remembered that conduct has little place in ancillary divorce proceedings.

Domestic Violence Orders Available.

The Law relating to personal protection and occupation of the family home is largely governed by Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996.

If you are married or if you live together you can apply to Court for:-

a. A Non-Molestation Order [Injunction].

· This is an Order to stop your partner harassing or assaulting you. The harassment must be serious to the point that it interferes with your mental or physical health. The harassment must also be intentional. Repeated phone calls can amount to harassment.

· Stop your former partner from trespassing on your property. You must show you have an interest in the property, for example you own it or that you are a tenant.

· Stop your former partner from causing a nuisance.

· Stop your former partner from interfering with your possessions.

More recently the courts have also allowed orders to exclude opponents from coming within a certain distance of the applicant's home or place of work

b. An Occupation Order.

These are orders which decide who should carry on living in the home during the short-term after there has been violence or harassment and it is apparent that the parties can not continue living together

Examples of the type of Occupation Order the Court can make are:-

· An Order as to who should remain in the home if your partner is trying to get you out.

· An Order allowing you back into the home if your partner has already thrown you out or is preventing you from entering into the home.

· An Order to exclude your partner from all or part of the home.

· An Order imposing a set of rules about living in the home.

· A Declaration that you and your partner must live in separate parts of the home.

· An Order to exclude your partner from coming within a certain distance of the home.

· An Order that your partner should leave the home or a part of it.

Who can Apply?

In order to apply for an Order under this part of the Family Law Act you must be an ‘associated person’. This means that you must be associated with the other party in one of the following ways:

· you are or have been married to each other

· you are cohabitants or former cohabitants (defined as opposite sex)

· you live or have lived in the same household (but not just as employee, tenant, lodger or boarder)

· you are relatives

· you have formally agreed to marry each other

· you are both the parents of the same child or have had parental responsibility for that child

· you are both involved in the same family proceedings (e.g. divorce)

If you are a woman without children who has never lived with your abuser you are therefore excluded from applying for orders under Part 4 of the Family Law Act (see below for other options).

There are also additional conditions on who can apply for occupation orders. You must have an existing legal right to occupy the home, unless you are married to the other party, or have lived together as man and wife. Accordingly gay couples are excluded from this protection.

Occupation Orders are basically short term, and will only be made whilst permanent arrangements are being sorted out.

Where there is urgency, and immediate protection is needed, the Court can make an Order ex-parte, which is without the need to serve or consult the other party. Such an Order will not be effective until served upon the other party. The Court will inevitably fix a ‘return date’ at the same time as making an ex parte Order, when the other party will be able to come to Court and have a say on the matter.

A power of arrest can be attached to a domestic violence injunction order. This will not be automatic, but does allow the police to immediately arrest and bring before the Court a person in breach of the injunction.

Often the Respondent to an injunction application will agree to give an undertaking to the Court, not to commit the behaviour complained of. To give such an undertaking it is not necessary to admit that the complained of behaviour took place, and this can lead to a cooling of the situation.

The effect of a giving an undertaking is the same as if an injunction were made. To breach the undertaking is a contempt of Court, which carries very heavy penalties of up to 5 years imprisonment.

Help available under the criminal law.

Anti-Harassment Injunction.

These are Orders made under the ‘Protection from Harassment Act 1997’ which makes harassment a criminal as well as civil offence. As such the police have powers to intervene and arrest a person suspected of harassment. Commonly these injunctions are used to prevent harassing behaviour by neighbours, protesters, family members, the media etc, but they also have a place in family proceedings.

Harassment can include, nuisance phone calls, stalking, threats, excessive noise etc. Basically any behaviour which causes you "alarm" or "distress". The harassment has to have happened more than once. In the case of stalking you must show the behaviour caused you to think that person was likely to use violence on you. In extreme cases, a Crown Court may sentence up to 5 years in prison.

In some areas police have specialist trained Domestic Violence Officers who will contact you, and who will support you during any legal proceedings. Your abuser can be held, pending investigations by the police, for up to 24 hours (36 at weekends) before he has to be taken before a court. Or he can be released on police bail. A condition of police bail is likely to be that they do not contact you.

The criminal law can offer you some protection, but its main purpose is to deal with the offender. Many aspects of controlling and abusive behaviour cannot be dealt with under the criminal law, and you may well be better off with a civil injunction.