Expunction: remove eligible arrest and case records.

What an expunction is — and how it differs from nondisclosure

An expunction order directs the agencies and courts listed in it to return or destroy the records and files relating to the arrest and to delete their public index references. Once the order is final, the release, maintenance, dissemination, or use of the expunged records for any purpose is prohibited, and you may deny the occurrence of the arrest and the existence of the order — the only exception is that when questioned under oath in a criminal proceeding you may state only that the matter has been expunged. Knowingly releasing or using expunged records is itself a criminal offense.

An order of nondisclosure is different: it seals the record from ordinary public view but leaves it in government systems, and certain agencies keep statutory access. For most routine cases, expunction applies to arrests that did not end in a final conviction or court-ordered community supervision other than a Class C misdemeanor; Texas law also contains narrower conviction-based expunction paths. Nondisclosure is the more common remedy for cases that ended in deferred adjudication or certain misdemeanor convictions. If expunction is not available for your case, nondisclosure sometimes is.

Who may qualify

Expunction eligibility is governed by Chapter 55A of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. The core paths for people who were arrested and released, whose charge did not result in a final conviction and is no longer pending, and who were not placed on court-ordered community supervision for the offense (other than for a Class C misdemeanor) are:

Acquittals

A not-guilty verdict at trial is one of the cleanest expunction grounds: there is no waiting period in the ordinary case, and the trial court itself can enter the order. An acquittal on appeal can also support expunction. The one significant limit on either is the criminal-episode rule described below.

Arrests that never became formal charges

If you were arrested but no information or indictment was ever presented, you become entitled to expunction after a waiting tier measured from the arrest date: at least 180 days for an arrest for a Class C misdemeanor, at least one year for a Class A or B misdemeanor, and at least three years where the arrest was for a felony or a felony charge arose from the same transaction. The misdemeanor tiers require that no felony charge came out of the same transaction. The wait disappears if the prosecutor certifies that the arrest records are not needed for any investigation or prosecution.

Charged cases that were dismissed or quashed

Some dismissals support expunction without waiting for the limitations period to run — when the court finds the charge was dismissed because you completed a pretrial intervention program, a veterans treatment court program, or a mental health court program (each once, on the statute's terms), because the charge rested on mistake, false information, or a similar reason indicating an absence of probable cause, or because the charging instrument was void.

Dismissals where the limitations period has expired

Other dismissed cases become expungeable once prosecution is no longer possible because the limitations period has expired. That makes the limitations rules — covered next — central to the timing of many expunctions.

Class C deferred disposition

A ticket-level (Class C) case dismissed after deferred disposition in a municipal or justice court is not a conviction and is often expungeable; Class C supervision does not trigger the community-supervision bar that applies to higher-level offenses.

Limitations periods: why timing depends on the offense

For a dismissal that relies on the limitations period, the clock is set by the Code of Criminal Procedure, and it is not the same for every case:

• Most misdemeanors: two years from the date of the offense.
• Misdemeanor assault with a family-violence relationship: three years.
• Felonies: offense-specific. Many felonies carry three years, but the statute assigns five, seven, ten, or twenty years to whole categories of offenses, and some serious offenses have no limitations period at all. A felony dismissal therefore cannot be summarized with one universal number — it has to be matched to the statute of the charge.

Because the period runs from the offense date and depends on the exact charge, the record review confirms both before we tell you where you stand.

Companion charges and the criminal-episode rule

Texas treats offenses arising out of the same criminal episode together. A court may not expunge an arrest for an offense on which you were acquitted if the offense arose out of a criminal episode and you were convicted of, or remain subject to prosecution for, at least one other offense from that episode. Related charges from the same arrest also affect the waiting-tier and dismissal paths, since those look at every charge that came out of the transaction. This is the single most common reason a case that "should be easy" needs a closer look — and why the screener asks about other charges from the same incident.

Why the full charging and disposition history matters

Eligibility turns on specifics that only the court record answers reliably: the final disposition, the full charging history (including companion charges from the same incident), the applicable limitations period, and the other statutory conditions. Two cases that sound identical in conversation can come out differently on paper — which is why our workflow verifies the record before an attorney confirms anything.

Where an expunction petition is filed

Expunction has its own filing rule, separate from nondisclosure and juvenile sealing. Under Chapter 55A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, an expunction petition is generally filed in a district court for the county where you were arrested or where the offense was alleged to have occurred. If the arrest was for a fine-only offense, the petition can instead be filed in a justice court or a municipal court of record in one of those counties. After a trial-court acquittal, the trial court itself can enter the expunction order.

So the filing court is not necessarily the court that handled the criminal case, and it can differ from the county on a mailing address or an old ticket. We confirm the proper court from the arrest and case records before anything is filed. Our current service area — Collin and Denton County matters — is a separate business decision, not a statement about where Texas law lets a petition be filed.

The filing process, in sequence

1. Eligibility confirmed from the record. A paralegal pulls the arrest and case records; Joshua Andor approves the determination.
2. Verified petition. The petition must be verified and must identify you, the offense charged, the arrest date, the arresting agency, the county and city of arrest, the case number and court, and every agency believed to hold records — which is why we ask for the full history.
3. Notice and hearing. The court sets a hearing no earlier than 30 days after filing and gives notice to each agency listed in the petition; agencies may appear.
4. Order. If the court finds you entitled to expunction, it enters an order directing it. The clerk sends the order to the Department of Public Safety, the Office of Court Administration, and every listed agency; DPS in turn notifies the federal depository and the private entities that buy its criminal-history data.
5. Compliance. Each listed agency returns or obliterates the covered records and deletes its index references, and the court's own expunction file is closed to inspection.

After the order: government records versus private databases

An expunction order governs the government records subject to the order. Private commercial background-check databases are compiled separately and may not update immediately or automatically; addressing them is a separate follow-up step, not an automatic effect of the order. DPS does notify private purchasers of its data and asks them to destroy the covered information, which helps, but it does not reach every database that ever copied the record.

Timing, without promises

It varies by court and case type, so we don't promise a schedule. In general, records verification takes days to a couple of weeks; the statute requires at least 30 days between filing and the hearing; and the court process as a whole is typically measured in months, not days. Agencies then have their own compliance steps after the order. We handle the follow-up so you don't have to chase anything.

Attorney verification, service area, and cost

Every confirmed answer that leaves this office has been checked against the actual court record and approved by Joshua Andor, who is Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Our office currently handles the lawyer work for qualifying Collin County and Denton County matters; anyone in Texas is welcome to take the free check. The $1,250 flat attorney fee covers one standard expunction matter — the record review, attorney approval, the petition and proposed order, filing, ordinary case management, and a standard hearing if one is required — paid $625 at engagement and $625 before filing, with court filing fees separate.

Common questions

Is an expunction the same as sealing?

No. An expunction removes eligible records; an order of nondisclosure seals them from ordinary public view but leaves them in government systems. For most routine cases, expunction applies where the arrest did not end in a final conviction or court-ordered community supervision other than a Class C misdemeanor; nondisclosure is the route for most completed deferred adjudications and certain misdemeanor convictions.

My case was dismissed. Can I file now?

It depends on why it was dismissed. Dismissals after pretrial intervention, a specialty-court program, a probable-cause or mistake finding, or a void charging instrument can be filed without waiting for limitations to run. An ordinary dismissal generally waits until the limitations period for the charge has expired — two years for most misdemeanors, longer for family-violence assault misdemeanors and for felonies.

I was never charged. Do I still have to do anything?

Yes. The arrest record exists until it is expunged. Once the waiting tier for your offense level has passed (or with a prosecutor's certification), you can petition to have the arrest records removed.

Can I say I was never arrested after an expunction?

Once the order is final you may deny the occurrence of the arrest and the existence of the order, except that when questioned under oath in a criminal proceeding you may state only that the matter has been expunged.

Will the record disappear from every background check?

Government entities subject to the order must remove the covered records, and DPS asks private purchasers of its data to destroy the information. Private databases that copied the record earlier may not update immediately or automatically; addressing them is a separate follow-up step.

What if I had two charges from the same arrest?

Tell us about both. Related offenses from the same criminal episode are analyzed together, and a conviction or pending charge on one can block expunction of another. The record review reads the full charging history for exactly this reason.