Charge Dismissed in Texas? Your Record Isn’t Clean Yet.

Most people assume a dismissal makes everything go away. It does not. In Texas, a dismissed charge stays on your record at the Department of Public Safety, on the court docket, in district attorney files, and across the commercial background-check databases that employers and landlords use. The arrest itself is still there. The charge is still there. The disposition now reads “dismissed,” but the file is intact and searchable.

The only way to remove it is a court order. In Texas that order is called an expunction, and you have to file for it.

What an expunction actually does

An expunction is a civil proceeding governed by Chapter 55A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (renumbered from Chapter 55 in the 2023 re-codification). When the district court grants an expunction, every government agency that holds a record of the arrest has to physically destroy or return the file. Texas DPS purges the arrest from its criminal history database. The court clerk destroys the paper and electronic file. The district attorney’s office returns or destroys its file. Private background-check vendors that subscribe to DPS data then drop the record from their feeds on the next refresh cycle.

After the order takes effect, you can legally deny the arrest ever happened on employment applications, housing applications, and professional licensing forms. The only time you have to disclose it is if you are testifying under oath in a criminal proceeding.

Who qualifies

Texas expunction eligibility under Art. 55A.101 is narrow and specific. The main categories:

• Acquittal after trial. A jury or bench verdict of not guilty.
• Dismissal with no further proceedings. Cases dismissed outright, no-billed by the grand jury, or resolved through successful completion of certain pretrial diversion programs.
• Arrest with no charge ever filed. Arrested but no charge ever presented to a court, with the applicable statute of limitations expired.
• Pardon. A full pardon on the offense.
• Class C misdemeanors after deferred disposition. Once you complete a Class C deferred under Art. 45.051, the charge can usually be expunged.

Each path has its own waiting period and its own technical requirements. An arrest that was never charged runs on the statute of limitations: 180 days for most Class C misdemeanors, two years for Class A and B misdemeanors, three years for most felonies. If a case was dismissed, the expunction can usually be filed once any appeal period has run and prosecution is off the table.

Who does not qualify (and what they need instead)

Several common scenarios do not qualify for expunction in Texas:

• DWI probation completed. If you were placed on probation for DWI and completed it, you are not eligible for expunction. A nondisclosure order may be available depending on the specifics.
• Deferred adjudication completed on most charges. Deferred adjudication is not expunction-eligible in most circumstances. Nondisclosure under Gov. Code Ch. 411 is the available remedy.
• Final conviction. A conviction after trial or plea is not expungeable outside of a full pardon.
• Conditional dismissal still pending. If the case was dismissed on the condition that you complete a program, the expunction clock starts after successful completion of the program.

Nondisclosure and expunction are not the same thing. A nondisclosure order seals the record from the public and from most private employers, but law enforcement, prosecutors, licensing boards, and certain regulated employers (school districts, medical, financial) still see it. An expunction destroys the record. If you qualify for an expunction, you want the expunction, not the nondisclosure.

DWI cases have their own expunction rules because Texas does not allow deferred adjudication for DWI. If your DWI was dismissed, here is what the expunction process looks like specifically for a Texas DWI charge.

Read more on expunction vs. non-disclosure in Texas — eligibility differences, waiting periods, and which one applies to your case.

What the process looks like in Travis County

Expunction is filed as a civil petition in the district court of the county where the arrest occurred. In Travis County that means filing with the Travis County District Clerk for assignment to one of the civil district courts. The petition names every agency that has a record: the arresting agency, the booking jail, the court clerk, the district attorney, DPS, the FBI in cases where prints were forwarded, and often several others. Each agency is served and has a statutory window to respond.

The court sets a hearing. If no agency opposes and the petition is clean, the hearing is short and the order is signed. If an agency opposes (usually the DA on a technicality about eligibility or waiting period), the hearing is contested. Most petitions we file go uncontested.

Once the order is signed, the clerk sends certified copies to every named agency. Each agency has a window to confirm destruction or return of the record. DPS updates its criminal history database. The commercial background-check vendors that pull from DPS update on their normal refresh cycle.

How long it takes

From the day we file to the day the record is physically removed from background-check databases, the typical timeline is four to six months. The breakdown:

• File the petition: week one.
• Serve every named agency: weeks one through three.
• Agency response window: about 30 days.
• Hearing date: typically 60 to 90 days after filing.
• Order signed at hearing.
• Agency destruction and DPS update: up to 180 days after the order.
• Commercial background-check vendor refresh: 30 to 90 days after DPS updates.

Kenneth Hines leads expunction filings at our firm. A routine dismissed misdemeanor in Travis County typically gets filed within a week of engagement and is set for hearing on the court’s first available civil expunction docket.

What it costs at our firm

Flat fee, no hourly billing, no surprise add-ons.

• Expunctions filed in Travis County: starting at $1,900.
• Expunctions filed outside Travis County: starting at $2,500.

The flat fee covers the petition, service on every required agency, the hearing, and follow-up with DPS to confirm the record has been purged. District clerk filing fees (currently in the $300 to $400 range depending on county) are billed separately at cost.

Counties we routinely file in: Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bell, Burnet, Gillespie, Blanco, Bastrop, Caldwell, Comal.

Filing without an attorney

You can file an expunction without a lawyer. The district clerk’s office will give you the basic petition form. People who do this usually run into one of three problems. They miss an agency, which causes DPS to kick the petition back. They miscalculate the waiting period, which gets the case dismissed for premature filing. They file in the wrong court, and the petition gets transferred or refiled at additional cost. After any of those, the same person usually calls a firm, and the total cost of filing twice is higher than hiring a lawyer to file once.

The bigger issue is that a wrong filing can itself create a record of the attempted expunction, which does not help you. Getting it right the first time matters more on an expunction than on most criminal filings, because the whole point of the order is to have nothing left in the system at the end.