Asking for a petitioner's address in an injunction case

I recently had a discerning experience during a domestic abuse injunction hearing in which I was providing service representation to the petitioner.  After the petitioner took the stand, the Commissioner asked her what her address was.  This was on the record with the respondent sitting in the room.  Fortunately, this client was together enough to respectfully evade a real answer even after the Commissioner pushed her but not all clients will be in a state of mind to do that.

So after I got back to the office and had some time to process it, I pulled out the statutes to see if the statutes prohibit the court from asking for that information beyond the confidential address form that is filed with the clerk and sealed.  813.12(5M) addresses the confidentiality of the petitioner's address in that it can not be on any court orders or the petition but makes no comment about asking for it during the hearing.  I believe the intent of the law was to keep the petitioner's address confidential completely but unfortunately that is not how it is written.  And I spoke with an attorney that represents petitioners in injunction hearings all the time who after reading the statute confirmed that nothing prohibits the court from asking for the petitioner's address.

So I have been trying to think of the best way to educate this commissioner on the importance of keeping a DV victim's address confidential.  If anyone has some thoughts, I would love to hear them.

A few tidbits regarding restraining orders

On Monday, I had a chance to talk with a GAL as we were waiting for our case to be called.  He pointed out a couple of things that I hadn't thought about and so I would like to share that information with you.

First, the statutes state that if the respondent was not served by the time of the hearing, the petitioner is entitled to one 14 day extension of the temporary restraining order.  So in our case when the Judge only gave us a 7 day extension, the GAL was able to successfully ask for an additional 7 day extension (for a total the 14 days).  I'm not sure if all Judges would agree to this but it is one way to think a little more creatively.

Secondly, the GAL pointed out that in a case where service is going to be a challenge, we might want to consider filing and NOT asking for the temporary restraining order.  This would give additional time to attempt to serve the respondent without the limitation of one 14 day extension.  The standard rules of service would apply in this case.  The one concern I have with this is that until an actually hearing is held after the respondent has been served, there would be no temporary restraining order in place.  But on the other hand the temporary restraining order is unenforceable until served.