Restraining Orders in New Brunswick: The Emergency Intervention Order Explained

If you are in immediate danger in New Brunswick, call 911 first. For everything else, the province's civil family-violence order is the emergency intervention order (EIO) under the Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Act, granted by an adjudicator appointed under New Brunswick's Judicature Act, who must decide an application within 24 hours and can order protection for up to 180 days.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

If You Are in Immediate Danger

An emergency intervention order is a legal tool, not a physical barrier; it is enforced after someone breaches it, not before. If you are in danger right now, call 911. Do not confront an abuser or delay calling for help while trying to sort out which civil order applies to your situation.

New Brunswick's Office of Women's Equality runs a toll-free line at 1-877-253-0266 (also reachable at 506-453-8126), and its official pages point to local transition houses, outreach programs, and crisis lines for immediate support. Kids Help Phone is available at 1-800-668-6868 for children and youth. New Brunswick also maintains ten regional Victim Services courthouse offices, in Bathurst, Campbellton, Edmundston, Fredericton, Grand Falls, Miramichi, Moncton, Saint John, St. Stephen, and Tracadie-Sheila/Caraquet, which can walk you through current EIO procedures for your area.

New Brunswick's Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Act

The governing law is the Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Act, S.N.B. 2017, c. 5, assented to March 31, 2017 and in force since May 1, 2018 (current text consolidated to June 6, 2025). It creates a single order: the emergency intervention order. The Act does not create a separate "protection order"; the term "restraining order" appears only in a general sense, describing a pre-existing order a decision-maker must consider when deciding an EIO application, not something this Act itself creates. New Brunswick's order name is easy to confuse with Nova Scotia's similarly worded emergency protection order next door; the two run under entirely separate statutes with different qualifying rules and durations.

Who Qualifies for an Emergency Intervention Order

Section 1 defines an "intimate personal relationship" as a relationship between two people, regardless of whether they have ever lived together, who are or have been married to each other, in a conjugal relationship, or in a dating or romantic relationship. There is no minimum relationship duration and no cohabitation requirement anywhere in the Act; cohabitation is explicitly stated to be irrelevant. Because "intimate partner violence" is defined as violence committed by someone who is or has been in that kind of relationship with the applicant, family members outside an intimate-partner relationship, a parent, sibling, roommate, or adult child, are not covered by this Act.

What an Emergency Intervention Order Can Require

Section 4(5) lets an adjudicator include any combination of the following: restraining the respondent from a specified place or person; restraining direct or indirect contact with the applicant or another named person; temporary exclusive occupation of the residence for the applicant; temporary possession of specific personal property; a police or deputy sheriff escort to supervise removal of belongings; a directive for police to remove the respondent from the residence; protection of property in which the applicant may have an interest; temporary care and custody of a child to the applicant; a police-executed seizure of weapons, firearms, ammunition, and related documents; a ban on publishing the applicant's or child's name, address, or identifying information; a restraint on further intimate partner violence; a restraint on terminating basic utilities to the residence; and a catch-all for any other provision the adjudicator considers necessary for the applicant's immediate safety. This list has not changed in substance since the Act's 2018 commencement; only the decision-maker's title has changed. For how New Brunswick courts otherwise decide custody and access outside an emergency order, see parenting time and decision-making.

Who Decides: The Adjudicator

The official who grants an EIO has been renamed twice since the Act came into force. From 2017 to 2024, the Act referred to a designated authority. That title was replaced, for a period, by Hearing Officer. As of the current consolidated text, both of those definitions are marked repealed, and every operative section of the Act now refers to an adjudicator, the current and correct title to use.

An adjudicator is appointed under New Brunswick's Judicature Act. The Lieutenant-Governor in Council makes the appointment on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice; an adjudicator must be a practising member in good standing of the Law Society of New Brunswick and may not practise law during their term, which runs up to ten years and is renewable. An adjudicator's orders are as valid and binding as if made by a judge of the Court of King's Bench, and an adjudicator carries the same immunity from liability as a King's Bench judge. The same roster of adjudicators also hears Small Claims Court matters, certain interim Divorce Act orders, Child and Youth Well-Being Act matters, certain interim Family Law Act orders, and Support Enforcement Act matters, so New Brunswick now runs one cross-jurisdiction lawyer-adjudicator roster rather than a role dedicated only to EIOs.

How to Apply

An application is made on a form provided by the Minister and may be made by telecommunication, which the Act defines to include telephone, email, or fax. An oath or affirmation may also be administered by telecommunication, and where an application proceeds by phone, the applicant must be available to speak directly with the adjudicator.

The people who may apply on a victim's behalf are: a peace officer; a Department of Justice and Public Safety victim services coordinator; a police-force victim services coordinator; a Women's Equality-funded Domestic Violence Outreach Program worker; a transition house or second-stage housing worker; or a Social Development social worker.

Once an application is made, an adjudicator must decide it within 24 hours. That is the one timing rule stated in the Act itself. Neither the Act nor its Regulation sets specific hours of the day for making an application in the first place, and two different claims circulating about specific application hours and a toll-free phone number could not be confirmed against the Act, the Regulation, or any official New Brunswick government page, and they conflict with each other. This page does not repeat either one. To find out how to start an application right now, contact your regional Victim Services office (listed above) or, in an emergency, call 911.

After the Order Is Made: Forwarding and Review

The adjudicator must forward the order and all supporting documentation to the Court within two days of making it. A judge must then review it within five days of the Court's receipt, confirming or varying it if satisfied there was sufficient evidence. If a judge is not available within that five-day window, review happens as soon as circumstances permit; the five-day figure is not a hard deadline that voids the order. If the judge is not satisfied there was sufficient evidence, a full hearing is directed, and the order stays in force in the meantime. At any such hearing, the burden is on the respondent to show the order should not be confirmed.

How Long an Emergency Intervention Order Lasts

An adjudicator may grant an EIO for up to 180 days, and the order takes effect immediately, subject to service on the respondent. On an application to vary, filed within 21 days of service or at any time if there has been a material change in circumstances, a judge may extend any provision of the order by up to a further 180 days. The Act sets no cap on how many times an order can be extended this way, so in principle an EIO could be renewed repeatedly in 180-day increments. The Act does not create a route to a permanent order; longer-term protection is meant to come through Family Law Act or Divorce Act proceedings instead. See divorce in Canada and separation agreements in Canada for that longer-term path.

Fees

A full-text search of both the Act and its General Regulation for "fee" and "fees" returned no matches in either document, so no filing fee is prescribed for an EIO application. A separate claim circulating online, that a fee waiver exists under a numbered rule of the New Brunswick Rules of Court, was checked directly against that rule's actual text; the rule in question governs divorce proceedings and has nothing to do with EIOs, so that claim does not check out. Based on the complete absence of a fee provision in the governing Act and Regulation, applying for an EIO appears to be free.

What Happens If Someone Breaches the Order

Under section 17 of the Act, a person commits an offense, punishable as a category J offense under the Provincial Offences Procedure Act, by violating an EIO or its regulations, knowingly making a false or misleading statement in an application, obstructing someone carrying out an authorized function under the Act, or breaching the Act's confidentiality provision. Section 18 gives police the power to arrest a suspected breach without a warrant.

Under the Provincial Offences Procedure Act, a category J offense carries a fine of $500 to $200,000, rising to a ceiling of $500,000 on a later conviction where the maximum fine was previously imposed. A judge may also sentence a category J offender to up to 18 months in jail, and unlike some lower penalty categories, this is available even on a first conviction, not only on a repeat offense. For the broader criminal-law picture around family violence in Canada, see domestic violence laws in Canada.

How an EIO Fits with Peace Bonds and Other Orders

The Act itself states that an EIO prevails over an existing Family Law Act or Divorce Act order to the extent necessary for the applicant's or a child's immediate safety, but yields to a Family Services Act, Child and Youth Well-Being Act, Family Law Act, or Divorce Act order made after the EIO; it is a short-term emergency layer, not a substitute for a longer-term family-court order.

A government-funded public legal education booklet, published by the Public Legal Education and Information Service of New Brunswick and linked from New Brunswick's own victim-services pages, frames the fuller picture of options this way (these figures come from that booklet rather than being independently checked against their own source statutes in this review, so treat them as a helpful map rather than a fully verified statement): a peace bond under Criminal Code section 810 is a criminal-court order sought through police or Crown, free, does not require a lawyer, and typically takes weeks to reach a hearing, but lasts up to a year and is enforceable across Canada; a restraining order under New Brunswick's Family Law Act can only be sought as part of an existing Family Law Act application, not on its own, and is enforced through civil contempt rather than by police directly; an emergency protection order for couples living on a First Nation reserve, under the federal Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, is a different, federal mechanism for married or common-law partners who have cohabited for at least a year, applied for at the Court of King's Bench, ordering a partner to leave the home for up to 90 days, extendable; and a no-contact order under the Criminal Code can attach at various stages of a criminal proceeding rather than being a standalone civil application. For a fuller explanation of how peace bonds work across Canada, see peace bonds in Canada.

Orders From Other Provinces

A full-text search of the Act for "province," "extra-provincial," "reciprocal," and "jurisdiction" turned up no provision addressing recognition, registration, or enforcement of a protection or restraining order issued by another Canadian province or territory; the only references to "province" in the Act concern New Brunswick's own chief firearms officer. This is a documented gap in the Act itself, not an exhaustive search of New Brunswick's entire statute book for some separate reciprocal-enforcement law. By contrast, the same public legal education booklet describes peace bonds, a different, criminal order, as enforceable nationally.

Related New Brunswick Resources

For how a New Brunswick court file, including an EIO once it reaches the Court, is handled as part of the court record, see court records in New Brunswick. If your situation also involves a common-law relationship, see common-law relationships in New Brunswick. For how New Brunswick's approach compares to the rest of the country, see the Canada-wide restraining order ladder.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. New Brunswick's family-violence laws change, and this page flags what could not be confirmed from a primary source: the specific hours during which an emergency intervention order application can be made, and any dedicated application phone number, are subject to two conflicting secondary claims that neither the Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Act, its Regulation, nor an official New Brunswick government page confirms; this page states only the primary-sourced 24-hour decision deadline. Whether New Brunswick recognizes another province's protection order was not found addressed in the Act, though the province's full statute book was not exhaustively searched, and several figures on peace bonds, Family Law Act restraining orders, and reserve-based emergency protection orders come from a secondary, government-funded booklet rather than being independently checked against their own source statutes in this review. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. For support, contact New Brunswick's Women's Equality office at 1-877-253-0266 or your regional Victim Services courthouse office.