Changing a personal intervention order (PSIO)

If you want to change a family violence intervention order, visit the family violence interventions order page.

If you are an applicant, affected person or respondent to a personal safety intervention order, you can ask the court to change the order.

You may want to change an intervention order if:

• you find the conditions in the order are unworkable or difficult to manage
• you want to have more contact with the respondent; or
• your circumstances have changed significantly since the court made the order.

A change in circumstances means that your personal life and situation has changed since the court made the order.  This change may have affected the protection you need, or the conditions the order includes.

Police may also apply to change the intervention order, even if they were not initially involved in the matter.

There are different types of changes you can ask the court to make. These include:

• Vary the intervention order. This is where you want the order to continue but you want the court to change (vary) the conditions.
• Extend the intervention order. This is where you want the intervention order and conditions to be in place for longer. You should apply at least four weeks before the current intervention order ends.
• Revoke the intervention order. This is where you do not want the intervention order anymore and want the court to cancel (revoke) the order.

You can apply to vary and extend an order in the same application.

If you are applying to vary an order, and there is less than four months remaining on your current order, you should consider extending the order.

A court officer can provide more information.

Applicants or protected persons

To vary, extend or revoke a personal safety intervention order, download and complete the application form(s) and provide the completed form(s) to your nearest court either by email, post or in person:

• Application for leave to make an application 
• Application to extend or vary a personal safety intervention order 
• Application to revoke a personal safety intervention order 

The court will arrange to serve a copy of the application on the other parties to the intervention order. This includes the Police if they applied for the intervention order.

You will need to take part in a hearing where a judicial officer will consider your application.

Respondents

If you are the respondent, you may want to apply to the court to change an intervention order if:

• you find the conditions in the order unworkable or difficult to manage
• your circumstances have changed significantly; or
• you want to have contact with the applicant.

To vary or revoke an intervention order, you must first apply to the court and be granted with permission to apply for changes. This is called making an application for leave.

The court will arrange to serve a copy of the application on the other parties to the intervention order. This includes the police if they applied for the intervention order.

You will need to take part in a hearing where a judicial officer will consider your application.

To make an application, you can download and complete the following forms and provide the completed forms to the nearest court via email, post or in person:

• Respondent application for leave to apply to vary or revoke a personal safety intervention order; and 
• Respondent application to vary or revoke a personal safety intervention order. 

Once you apply for leave, there will be a court hearing where the judicial officer will decide whether your application for leave has been successful.

At the hearing, you must be able to demonstrate to the court that your circumstances have significantly changed or new facts have arisen since the order was originally made which would justify the changes that you seek.

If the court grants your application to apply (this is when the magistrate grants you leave), the application will be served on the other person. If the police applied for the order, they will also receive the documents.

Withdrawing your application

A judicial officer can make this order on their own initiative.

The court will need a person seeking to withdraw to: 

• file an application to withdraw an application to be served on the respondent by the registrar; or 
• if the person attends the court, make an oral application to the court.