Georgia record restriction: the paperwork, filled in for your court

Georgia does not call it expungement, and which route you take is decided by the date of the arrest rather than by what you want. Get that wrong and the paperwork goes to the wrong office.

149 · one case, one court

Flat. No hourly billing, no consultation to book.

What the process actually is

Work out which route your arrest falls under — before 1 July 2013 you apply to the arresting agency on the GBI form; on or after that date the disposition should have restricted the record already, and the question is why it did not.
For a misdemeanour conviction it is neither of those: that is a petition to the court of conviction under the Second Chance Act, four years after the sentence ended, served on the prosecutor.
Restriction only covers the criminal history report. The court file stays open unless a judge is separately asked to seal it — the step people find out about afterwards.

The forms this state publishes — you pick one

Record restriction — Request for record restriction, made to the prosecuting agency. Georgia routes this through the prosecutor rather than a petition, and the agency supplies its own request form.
Sealing motion — Motion to seal the court file. A separate step; restriction alone does not close the court record.

Listed as the state lists them. Matching your case to one of these is a legal judgement, so it is yours to make: the clerk of the court and your local legal aid clinic will both tell you which applies, at no charge. I fill in the one you name.

What you get for the fee

The form you selected, filled in with your case number, charge, disposition and dates.
The dates worked out from the dates you give me, and the published rule they come from, with the page and the date I read it.
A filing checklist: which office, what it costs there, how many copies, who has to be served, what any hearing is for.

What this is not

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. You choose the form, you decide to file, you sign, you appear.
I do not select the form for you and I do not tell you whether you qualify. Both of those are legal judgement, and in Ohio the board that polices this says so in as many words. Your clerk and your local legal aid clinic answer them for free.
No promised outcome. A judge can deny a correctly filed application, and anyone quoting you a success rate is selling a number they cannot produce.
Where your answers and the published rule do not line up I will not take the work, and you pay nothing.

What it costs whoever does it

Arresting agency processing fee, capped at 50.
GCIC fee 25, by money order or certified check.
Court filing fee if it is a Second Chance Act petition.

Those are the state's costs, not mine, and you pay them either way.

The free route, named

Georgia Courts' own self-help pages — Written by Georgia Legal Aid, and there are expungement desks and Georgia Justice Project clinics around the state. What none of them is, as far as I can find, is a tool that fills the form in: Georgia publishes static PDFs and a queue.

Check this case free

The next page asks what court and what charge, and asks you to pick the form off the list above. Nothing is charged there.

Not a law firm and not legal advice. Document preparation only. Swanum · Terms