One signature can stop a custody case in its tracks before a judge ever hears the other side.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A commissioner — not a judge — can issue a protective order in Maryland based on one person’s word, with no one else in the room. Once it’s filed, it can stop a custody case in its tracks, regardless of what else is pending. Lawmakers in Annapolis are starting to notice the same gap in a related part of the system. The gap in protective orders themselves remains wide open.
On July 17, 2026, a protective order surfaced in the ongoing Reichert v. Hornbeck custody case in Anne Arundel County — the latest in a case that has run for more than a decade and produced, by court record, protective order filings from both sides of the dispute. The petition arrived in the name of Grant Reichert, now 16, while three of his father Jeffrey Reichert’s own motions — for contempt, for custody modification, and to enforce the court’s own supervised-communication order — sat pending, unresolved, before the same court.
The mechanism that produced this latest filing is not unusual at all. It’s how Maryland’s protective order system is built to work.
The case is unusual in its length and its acrimony. The mechanism that produced this latest filing is not unusual at all. It’s how Maryland’s protective order system is built to work.
How a protective order gets filed
Under Maryland Family Law § 4-504.1, when the courthouse is closed, a person seeking a protective order doesn’t need to find a judge. A District Court commissioner — not a judge, and not necessarily an attorney — can issue an interim protective order on an ex parte basis: the person the order is filed against isn’t present, isn’t notified in advance, and doesn’t get to respond before the order is signed. The standard is “reasonable grounds to believe” abuse occurred — a real but comparatively low bar, assessed on one side’s account alone.
The order is already in effect by then, and in an active custody case, ‘in effect’ can mean a scheduled visit or call doesn’t happen, a pending motion gets overtaken, and a case’s momentum shifts to whoever filed last.
That order takes effect once served. It can restrict contact, require someone to leave a home, and — in a custody dispute — reshape who talks to whom while the underlying case is still being litigated. A hearing in front of an actual judge comes later, typically within days. But the order is already in effect by then, and in an active custody case, “in effect” can mean a scheduled visit or call doesn’t happen, a pending motion gets overtaken, and a case’s momentum shifts to whoever filed last.
A related gap, and an attempt to close it
HB 336 questioned commissioner authority for arrest warrants. The same structural question for protective orders remains unanswered.
Lawmakers in Annapolis have been looking at a version of this problem — not for protective orders, but for criminal arrest warrants, which run through a similar commissioner system. House Bill 336, which would bar private citizens from obtaining criminal arrest warrants directly from a District Court commissioner without police or prosecutorial review first, passed the House of Delegates 125–10 on March 23, 2026, and the Senate 35–11 on April 13, 2026. Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates testified in support, arguing that letting private citizens swear out warrants on their own word, unreviewed, invites abuse of the system by people with a personal stake in the outcome.
The bill addresses arrest warrants specifically. It would not change how protective orders are filed or issued — that runs through a different statute, with its own commissioner process, and nothing currently moving through the legislature targets it directly. But the reasoning behind HB 336 — that a single unreviewed accusation to a commissioner can trigger serious consequences before anyone in authority checks the underlying facts — applies just as directly to protective orders in contested custody cases. If lawmakers found that logic persuasive enough to restrict it for arrest warrants, family law attorneys and reform advocates say the same argument hasn’t yet been made, or hasn’t yet landed, for the protective order system itself.
What it looks like when it’s misused in a custody fight
Family courts don’t currently distinguish, at the moment of filing, between a protective order sought by someone in genuine danger and one filed as a tactic in an ongoing custody dispute. Both go through the same commissioner process, the same low initial bar, the same immediate effect.
Researchers who study high-conflict custody litigation have a name for the pattern when it’s a tactic: litigation abuse — not any single filing being provably false, but the use of continued filings themselves, including reopening matters already resolved, to extend restrictions and exhaust the other parent, independent of whether a judge ultimately agrees with any individual petition. It’s difficult to measure at a system level, because family court records are often sealed and the same filing looks identical on paper whether it’s protective or tactical.
The system is built for speed and low initial scrutiny rather than for sorting tactical filings from urgent ones.
The Reichert case offers a specific, documented illustration of the pattern, regardless of how the underlying custody dispute is ultimately resolved: a protective order that surfaced the same week the court’s own neutral, court-appointed visitation supervisor moved to force a hearing on why scheduled contact had stopped; a response from opposing counsel, when asked what recent conduct justified the filing, that pointed to an order from 2022 rather than anything from the relevant period; and a family court docket showing protective order filings from both parents across more than a decade, with at least one prior filing denied outright for lacking “any statutory basis for relief.”
None of that determines whether this specific petition is legitimate — that’s for a judge to decide, and the case remains open. What it shows is how easily the mechanism itself can be used procedurally, by either side, regardless of intent, in a system built for speed and low initial scrutiny rather than for sorting tactical filings from urgent ones.
A second case, and an appellate court saying it plainly
Reichert’s case isn’t the only one on record showing this pattern — and the second example comes with something Reichert’s case doesn’t yet have: an appellate court calling it out directly.
In Y.B. v. T.B. (Appellate Court of Maryland, No. 1650, Sept. Term 2022, decided December 1, 2023, arising from the Circuit Court for Charles County), a mother obtained a final protective order against the children’s father based on threatening phone calls. Notably, the court made no finding that he had abused or neglected the children themselves, and didn’t order a Department of Social Services investigation — the standard step when a court has reasonable grounds to believe a child has been abused.
Reichert’s case isn’t the only one on record showing this pattern — and the second example comes with something Reichert’s case doesn’t yet have: an appellate court calling it out directly.
She then cut off all contact between the father and the two children for two months, citing her own fear. At trial, the same judge who had issued the protective order didn’t credit her fear, telling her directly, on the record: “I don’t find that credible really.” The court found her in contempt for denying court-ordered visitation and awarded the father shared physical custody and tie-breaking legal authority. On appeal, the custody award and the contempt finding were both affirmed.
The shape is the same as what’s playing out in Reichert v. Hornbeck: a protective order obtained without any finding of danger to the children specifically, then used to justify cutting off a parent’s court-ordered access — until a judge looked closely enough to say, on the record, that the justification didn’t hold up.
The reform question nobody’s asked yet
The system that let a protective order arrive in Grant Reichert’s name while his father’s own motions sat waiting for a hearing is still exactly the system it was before HB 336 passed.
HB 336’s path through the legislature this year suggests Annapolis is willing to revisit how much power a commissioner should have to act alone, on one person’s word, with real consequences attached. Family law advocates on multiple sides of the custody-reform debate — both those focused on domestic violence protections and those focused on parental access — say the protective order system raises the identical structural question the arrest-warrant bill was built to answer, and that it hasn’t yet gotten the same legislative attention.
Whether that changes in the next General Assembly session is an open question. The system that let a protective order arrive in Grant Reichert’s name last week, while his father’s own motions sat waiting for a hearing, is still exactly the system it was before HB 336 passed.
Sources: Maryland Code, Family Law § 4-504.1 (interim protective orders, ex parte process). House Bill 336 (2026 Regular Session), Maryland General Assembly — House vote 125–10, March 23, 2026; Senate vote 35–11, April 13, 2026. Y.B. v. T.B., No. 1650, Sept. Term 2022, Appellate Court of Maryland (filed Dec. 1, 2023), arising from the Circuit Court for Charles County, Case Nos. C-08-FM-21-000522, C-08-FM-21-000534, and C-08-FM-22-807900. Reichert v. Hornbeck, Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County: Verified Report of Gena Caruana (June 15, 2026); Verified Declaration of Gena Caruana (July 6, 2026); correspondence between counsel for Jeffrey Reichert and Brennan McCarthy, Esq. (July 2026); Case No. C-02-FM-24-812286 (denied protective order, Feb. 23, 2024).
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