Legal Help for Domestic Violence Victims

WomensLaw is the first and only free, legal resource for survivors of domestic & dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking that offers safety and legal information and resources in "plain language" in both English and Spanish. We are dedicated to empowering survivors and their advocates to make informed decisions about their options, safety, and legal remedies. 

From May 1, 2016 to July 31, 2016, there were 378,330 people who accessed the life-saving information that is housed on WomensLaw.org. In the past three months (May 2016 to July 2016), we worked directly with 643 victims, survivors, and their friends, advocates, or family members through our Email Hotline. This unique hotline offers victims a direct line to ask a question of our attorneys and volunteers, who specialize in domestic violence and the law. We respond to every request as quickly as possible, but take time to respond thoughtfully and include individualized resources and information. We frequently correspond back and forth with the women and men who write in, and many are grateful for our assistance and support, as below:

“I wanted to take the time to write back to you, and let you know I really appreciate your response, and this organization for allowing women the opportunity to voice their concerns. It means more than you know… I appreciate all of the information and links you provided to me, and I will look through them. Again, I wanted to take the time to thank you, and in the event I need to, I will be glad to recommend this website to the women I know. Thank you for everything!” - -WomensLaw Email Hotline response

And:

“Thank you so much. This information is very helpful. I really appreciate you sending me a variety of links, and taking the time to respond. I wish I would have came across womenslaw.org a couple years ago, but I'm glad I did.” -WomensLaw Email Hotline response

We answer questions and provide our expertise on a wide range of topics - including custody, divorce, relocation, and more. Here is one recent inquiry that we received on the Email Hotline, which demonstrates the need for legal information and resources for victims of abuse dealing with custody issues: 

“My son's father took him out of the state months ago. And is not allowing me to receive any pictures of my son or talk to him. I never gave him permission to leave with my son. PLEASE HELP.” -WomensLaw Email Hotline inquiry 

We are constantly updating our website, making changes and additions to it daily. Our priority is to make sure that the legal information that we have is current with changes in the laws and to continue to add new information that would be useful for victims and survivors of abuse. Between May and July 2016, we made several updates to WomensLaw.org. We added information to our Minnesota Orders for Protection page and Harassment Restraining Orders page; we created a new section called Technology Misuse under our Learn About Abuse section; we updated and augmented our  Kentucky Statewide Programs page and Finding a Lawyer page; we improved our Alaska Crimes page by hyperlinking 29 different degrees of crimes to their definitions on our State Statutes page; updated our state gun laws page and custody page for Nevada…and these are just a handful of the changes and improvements that we made over the past three months! See them all here on our What’s New on this Site page: http://womenslaw.org/simple.php?sitemap_id=63

Thank you for supporting WomensLaw and the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). Stay in the loop! Sign up for occasional action alerts and updates from NNEDV at: NNEDV.org/signup