Continuous Violence Against the Family Charge in Texas

A continuous violence against the family charge in Texas is a third-degree felony under Penal Code Section 25.11 that bundles two or more acts of family violence within a 12-month period into a single offense punishable by two to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The charge matters because it lets prosecutors file a felony without any prior conviction. A first assault against a family member is normally a Class A misdemeanor, and it usually takes a prior family violence conviction to elevate the next one to felony status. Section 25.11 removes that stepping stone.¹

How the Charge Works

A person commits this offense by engaging in two or more separate acts of family violence during any period of 12 months or less, with each act causing bodily injury to a family member, household member, or dating partner.¹ The individual assaults do not have to have been reported to police or previously prosecuted. They can involve different victims, as long as each victim qualifies under the family violence definitions.

That is the feature that surprises most people charged under the statute. Incidents you assumed were closed, never reported, or resolved informally can resurface months later as elements of a felony. Compare that to a standalone assault causing bodily injury against a family or household member, which is a Class A misdemeanor on a first offense and carries up to one year in county jail and a fine of up to $4,000.² Section 25.11 lets the state charge a felony straight out of the gate based on the current allegations alone.

Who Counts as a Family or Household Member

Texas defines the eligible victims broadly:

Family members related by blood or marriage, including parents, children, siblings, and in-laws.³
Current or former spouses.
People who share a child, whether or not they were ever married.
Current or former household members, including roommates and unmarried partners.
Foster children and foster parents, whether or not they live together.
Dating partners in a continuing romantic or intimate relationship, judged by the length, nature, and frequency of their interactions.⁴

The two qualifying assaults do not have to involve the same person. An incident with a spouse in January and one with a roommate in August can support a single continuous violence charge if both fall inside one of these categories.

What the Prosecution Has to Prove

The state has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you committed at least two separate assaults causing bodily injury to a qualifying victim within a 12-month window, and that you acted intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly in each one. Bodily injury is defined broadly to mean physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical condition. Verbal abuse or threats alone don’t satisfy this element.

One feature of the statute makes it harder to defend than people expect. The jury does not have to agree on which specific incidents happened. Jurors only have to agree that at least two qualifying assaults occurred inside the 12-month period.¹ One juror can believe events A and B occurred while another believes B and C did, and both still vote to convict.

Prison, Fines, and Probation

As a third-degree felony, the sentencing range is two to ten years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and the court can add a fine of up to $10,000.⁵ Community supervision may be available, and deferred adjudication is technically an option.

Deferred adjudication carries a trap here. Even a successfully completed deferred adjudication for a family violence offense cannot be sealed through a nondisclosure order in Texas. The disposition stays visible on background checks indefinitely. Anyone assuming deferred means the case disappears should know that isn’t how it works for this charge.

The Firearm Ban Is Permanent

A conviction triggers a federal ban on possessing firearms or ammunition. Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment from shipping, transporting, or possessing any firearm or ammunition.⁶ Because Section 25.11 carries a ten-year maximum, the ban applies automatically and has no sunset date under federal law.

The prohibition reaches further than personal ownership. It covers ammunition, and it applies to guns kept in your home even when someone else owns them. A relative’s hunting rifle in a shared closet is enough to create a federal violation. For anyone working in law enforcement, security, or the military, a conviction functionally ends that career.

Custody, Protective Orders, and Immigration

Family violence findings carry directly into Texas custody cases. A history of family violence creates a rebuttable presumption under the Family Code that appointing the violent parent as sole or joint managing conservator is not in the child’s best interest. That flips the burden: the convicted parent has to prove involvement serves the child, not the other way around. Unsupervised visitation gets harder to obtain, and courts can terminate visitation entirely in severe cases.

A conviction almost always comes with a protective order barring contact with the victim and their residence, workplace, and children’s schools.⁷ Violating it is a separate crime.

For non-citizens, the immigration stakes are often heavier than the criminal ones. Federal law makes any non-citizen deportable after conviction for a crime of domestic violence against a spouse, former spouse, co-parent, cohabitant, or someone similarly situated under state family violence law, regardless of immigration status.⁸ Violating a protective order is a separate deportation ground under the same statute. A conviction can also block naturalization by defeating the good-moral-character requirement.

Employment and Housing

A felony family violence conviction shows up on background checks and can disqualify you from a wide range of jobs. Positions requiring professional licenses in healthcare, education, law enforcement, and finance commonly treat a felony involving assaultive conduct as grounds for license suspension or revocation, and failing to disclose the conviction is usually itself grounds for discipline.

Housing consequences reach further than people expect. Public housing authorities and landlords in federal housing programs can deny applicants based on criminal history. The Violence Against Women Act gives housing providers authority to split a lease to remove the person responsible for the violence while keeping the victim housed.⁹ The conviction can end current housing and complicate finding new housing.

Defenses

The right defense depends on the facts, but a few strategies come up often in these cases.

Self-Defense

Texas law permits force when a person reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect against another’s use or attempted use of unlawful force.¹⁰ The questions are whether the force was proportional and whether the belief in an imminent threat was reasonable. Texas imposes no duty to retreat inside your own home under the castle doctrine, which can matter in household cases.

Breaking the Pattern

Because the offense requires two or more separate acts, dismantling even one alleged incident can collapse the felony. If the defense can reduce the case to a single qualifying assault, the charge cannot stand as continuous violence. The state might still pursue a misdemeanor, but the felony falls. Attorneys often focus on inconsistent statements, missing physical evidence, and witness credibility.

No Bodily Injury

Each alleged act must have caused bodily injury. If one or more of the incidents produced no pain, illness, or impairment, that element fails for those events, and the case may not have the two qualifying acts it needs.

1
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code Section 25.11 – Continuous Violence Against the Family
2
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code Section 22.01 – Assault
3
Justia Law. Texas Family Code Chapter 71 – Definitions
4
State of Texas. Texas Family Code Section 71.0021 – Dating Violence
5
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code Section 12.34 – Third Degree Felony Punishment
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
7
Justia Law. Texas Family Code Chapter 85 – Issuance of Protective Order
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1227 – Deportable Aliens
9
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Notice of Occupancy Rights Under the Violence Against Women Act
10
State of Texas. Texas Penal Code Section 9.31 – Self-Defense