Walk It Through: The House Call
Someone called, the children were in the next room, the phone and the keys left with the officers, a knock the next night, a landlord with a key, and a rifle in the closet.
An argument, loud enough that someone called. Two officers at the door, one for each of you.
This walkthrough covers the domestic violence machinery, the first seventy two hours after a child is taken into custody, the forfeiture chapter's deadlines, the warrant requirement at the door, the landlord's conditioned right of entry, and the weapons disability section. It is not safety planning and it does not say who is to do what. It does not cover what a county agency does after the shelter care hearing, the full domestic violence ladder, which filing fits a particular seized item, the warrant exceptions in detail, or whether a particular prior offence counts as a disability. Ohio has a statewide domestic violence hotline, every county has victim advocates and a public defender's office, and a licensed Ohio attorney advises anybody on either side.
A practice walkthrough, not a prediction of how any real one will go. Legal information, not legal advice.
Words this turns on
Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.
20 words
- Administrative warrantA document issued by an agency rather than by a court. An immigration detainer and a warrant for arrest of an alien are both signed inside the agency, by an officer or a supervisor.
- Apparent authorityA search is valid where officers reasonably believed the person consenting had authority over the place, even if that belief turns out to be wrong.
- Co-occupant consentOne resident can consent to a search of shared space. Where a second resident is physically present and expressly objects, that objection defeats the consent as to that person.
- Confirmation of saleThe court order approving a sheriff's sale. It is a separate event from the sale itself, and it is the point at which a foreclosed property stops being redeemable.
- ConsentVoluntary agreement to a search, judged on the totality of the circumstances. Valid consent removes the need for a warrant and for probable cause.
- CurtilageThe area immediately around a home that is treated as part of the home for Fourth Amendment purposes. A porch is the standard example.
- Equitable sharesThe basis on which adjoining owners maintain an existing partition fence. What is equitable depends on the circumstances rather than being fixed.
- Exclusionary ruleEvidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment is generally inadmissible in a criminal prosecution. The case that applied the rule to the states came out of Ohio.
- Exigent circumstancesAn emergency that excuses the warrant requirement, such as an immediate risk to life, a suspect in flight, or evidence about to be destroyed.
- Habitual truantA child absent without legitimate excuse for thirty or more consecutive hours, forty two or more hours in a school month, or seventy two or more hours in a school year.
- Home solicitation saleA sale of consumer goods or services where the seller personally solicits at the buyer's residence and the agreement is given there, or where the buyer's agreement is made at a place other than the seller's place of business. It is the category the three day right to cancel attaches to.
- IntestateDying without a valid will, so an estate is divided by the statute instead of by the person's own instructions.
- Knock and announceThe requirement that officers executing a warrant announce their presence and purpose and wait a reasonable time before forcing entry. Ohio states it by statute as well.
- No duty to retreatA person has no duty to retreat before using force in self defence anywhere they lawfully are, and a court or jury may not consider the possibility of retreat in deciding whether the force was justified.
- Per stirpesA way of dividing an estate where a deceased person's share passes down their own line rather than being shared out among the survivors at that level.
- Reasonable expectation of privacyWhether a person expected privacy in a place or thing and whether society recognises that expectation. It is the threshold question for whether something counts as a search at all.
- RedemptionRecovering property before a sale is finalised by paying what the law requires, which in a foreclosure is the judgment, the costs, poundage and interest.
- Release from administrationA probate court order letting a small estate skip full administration. The ceiling is thirty five thousand dollars in assets, or one hundred thousand where a valid will left all of them to a person named in it as the surviving spouse who survives.
- Rent escrowDepositing rent with the clerk of court instead of with the landlord, where the landlord has not met the obligations the chapter sets, so the money is held until the condition is dealt with.
- The self defence presumptionA person is presumed to have acted in self defence when using force against somebody unlawfully entering, or having unlawfully entered, their residence or occupied vehicle. Ohio also puts the burden on the state to disprove self defence once the issue is raised.