You and your partner get into a serious disagreement. It ends with you threatening them, and then they call the police. They claim that they are a victim of domestic violence.
You are stunned. You just said what you said in the heat of the moment. You never laid a hand on them or harmed them in any way. You don’t feel like you’ve committed domestic violence. You just think that it was part of the disagreement between the two of you. Arguments are nothing new, and you don’t understand why this time is any different.
Can a threat qualify as domestic violence? Could you actually be arrested and charged even though you never harmed anyone?
This may be a form of domestic violence
The fact of the matter is that New York specifically notes that intimidation and threats can be forms of domestic violence. It doesn’t necessarily have to become physical. If the person really believed the threat was legitimate, they could still have suffered from that act.
This is similar to how a threat can be considered assault. You don’t necessarily have to actually harm that third party. If they have reason to believe that the threat that you made was true and they feared for their life, they can still claim assault, despite the fact that you didn’t touch them. The same idea holds true with domestic violence, even though it’s your partner and not a third party.
If you are facing charges for domestic violence and you’re worried about the impact on your life and your future, you must know about your defense options.
