When you got served, you probably focused on the petition, because that’s the document with your name on it and your ex’s accusations in it. But if your case was filed in one of the many Texas counties that use them, there was another document in that stack, and it’s the one that’s going to get people in trouble over the next few weeks. It’s called a standing order, and it’s already binding on you.
I bring this up because I’ve watched good people torpedo their own cases in the first month, not out of malice, but because nobody told them the rules had already changed the second those papers hit their hand.
What a standing order is, and whether you have one
A standing order is a blanket order that a county’s family courts apply automatically to every case filed there. Nobody had a hearing about it, nobody asked for it, and your ex didn’t do anything special to get it entered against you. It simply attaches to the case, and it binds both of you equally the moment you’re served.
Here’s the part I want you to check rather than assume, because this trips people up constantly. Not every Texas county has a standing order. A lot of the bigger ones do, and some counties have none at all, which means the rules in Bexar County aren’t necessarily the rules in the county where you’re sitting. Look through the paperwork you were handed, and if you don’t see one, pull up your county district clerk’s website or your local rules and look for the standing order there. Don’t guess, and don’t assume your buddy’s case in another county tells you anything about yours.
If your case doesn’t have a standing order, that doesn’t mean it’s the wild west, because the other side can still ask the court for a temporary restraining order aimed specifically at you. But it does mean the automatic restrictions I’m about to describe may not apply.
What these orders typically restrict
Standing orders vary by county, so read yours rather than taking my summary as gospel. That said, they tend to cover the same three territories, and the pattern is worth understanding.
The first is money and property. You generally can’t sell, hide, transfer, or borrow against marital property outside the ordinary course of business. You can keep paying your mortgage, your car note, your groceries, and your reasonable attorney or coaching costs, but you can’t empty the joint account and move it somewhere clever, and you can’t quietly sell the boat to your brother for a dollar. Standing orders also usually prohibit canceling or changing the beneficiaries on insurance, which includes health insurance for the kids, life insurance, and the auto policy. I’ve seen a spouse drop the other from health coverage in week two thinking it was a reasonable response to being left, and it did nothing but hand the other side a very easy motion.
The second is the children. You typically can’t remove them from the state, and often not from a defined geographic area, without written agreement or a court order. You can’t disrupt their school enrollment or their routine, and you can’t hide them from the other parent. If there’s already a possession schedule in place, follow it, and if there isn’t one yet, this is exactly the situation where you want to be pushing for a temporary orders hearing rather than making unilateral decisions and hoping it works out.
The third is conduct, and this is the one that catches people emotionally. Most standing orders prohibit threatening, harassing, or disturbing the peace of the other party or the children, and a lot of them now speak directly to communications and social media. That means the 2 a.m. text thread, the group chat where you tell everyone what your ex did, and the Facebook post with the screenshots are all potential violations, not just bad ideas.
Why people violate these without meaning to
Almost nobody sets out to violate a standing order. What actually happens is that a person gets served, panics about money, and moves funds to protect themselves. Or they hear something ugly through a mutual friend and respond in writing at midnight. Or their mother posts about the case on Facebook and tags them. Every one of those becomes an exhibit, and the exhibit isn’t really about the money or the post. It’s about painting you as someone who doesn’t follow court orders, which is the single worst impression you can leave with a judge who’s about to decide how much they can trust you with your own children.
The other side’s lawyer is not going to correct your misunderstanding of the rules. They’re going to document it and hand it to the judge at your first hearing.
What to do about it right now
Find your standing order, read it start to finish, and read it a second time with a highlighter. Then take an honest inventory of anything you’ve already done since you were served that might cross a line, because if there’s a problem, you want to be the one who identifies it and fixes it rather than the one who gets ambushed with it at a hearing.
From there, my advice is simple and a little boring. Move your communication with your ex onto a single written channel, keep it short and about logistics only, and assume a judge will read every word of it someday, because there’s a decent chance one will. Keep paying the ordinary bills the way you always have. Don’t move money. Don’t make a point.
And if the other side violates it, don’t retaliate. Document it, keep the evidence, and use it. That’s a much stronger position than matching them violation for violation and letting the judge decide you’re both a problem.
I’m not an attorney and this isn’t legal advice. I’m a coach who helps pro se litigants in Texas family law cases understand the process and prepare their own case. If you just got served and you’re not sure what you’re allowed to do, let’s talk before you do something that costs you.