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How Long Does An Expunction Take In Texas?

Well, first off, we need to talk about being eligible for the expunction because it can take a while to be eligible for an expunction. Now, if a person gets arrested for some type of criminal offense in Texas and that case gets dismissed, or the person is found not guilty, they can be eligible for an expunction.

Now, if the case gets dismissed, typically they may have to wait for the statute of limitations to expire before they can file an expunction. That depends on what the charge was. So, if it was a typical low-level misdemeanor, then the statute of limitations may be two years.

For many felonies, the statute of limitations is three years. But, for a lot of other felonies, the statute of limitations can be much longer. It gets kind of technical here, and it depends a lot on the different type of felony charges. There can be some with a statute of limitations of up to 10 years. Some, such as murder, have no statute of limitations at all.

So, first off, if the person is eligible, then we have to wait for the statute of limitations to expire. Now, there are some situations where a person can be eligible for an expunction right away. A person is found not guilty, they're eligible to do the expunction right away.

Some types of dismissals resulting from a program that's approved by the court, maybe. There's lots of different programs depending on the jurisdiction or the city that may be available to deal with. Say, a drug charge or some other type of offense. But with some of these programs, completion of the program with a dismissal at that point allows the person to proceed with doing the expunction right away without having to wait for the statute of limitations to expire.

Now, we're at the point where the person is eligible to file the expunction, the statute of limitations is expired, or they were found not guilty, or they completed the program that allows them to file right away. Now, this is going to depend on the jurisdiction or the county. Some counties take longer to process an expunction than others. But, generally it's gonna take three to six months.

First off, the person has to file an expunction and then all the agencies identified in the expunction have a certain amount of time to reply to the expunction. Then, we have to go through the court process, and depending on the county, that may be a very quick process of getting it done in a month or two. Or it may take several months or more to go through that process to get to the point where the judge grants the expunction.

Then, there is a short period of time before the judgment of expunction becomes final. And then it takes a short time for all those records of arrest to be erased, deleted, and destroyed. But once you get that expulsion granted, and you go through that process, and those records get erased, deleted, and destroyed, then you're legally entitled to say that that offense never happened.


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