An order of nondisclosure is a court order that seals a criminal record. It is different from an expunction, which destroys the record outright. Texas treats nondisclosure as a sealing remedy: the record continues to exist in the agencies that hold it, but the law prohibits its disclosure to the public and limits access to a narrow list of criminal-justice, public-safety, and licensing entities.

The standard pathway is Section 411.0735, which lets a person who completed the sentence on a qualifying misdemeanor petition the original trial court to seal the record after the applicable waiting period has run.¹ The waiting periods and the offenses that are barred from this relief are set in Section 411.074.² The practical effect is that a background check produced by a private vendor will not show the sealed entry, while a police agency or a licensing board running a fingerprint check still can. For most working adults, that line is the whole point of the remedy.

Standard nondisclosure under Section 411.0735 is one remedy, but eligibility for it is gated in three ways, and each gate has to clear before the petition can go forward.¹

A qualifying misdemeanor conviction

The relief reaches a person who was convicted of and completed the sentence on a qualifying misdemeanor.¹ Whether a given misdemeanor qualifies is the first question, because some offenses are excluded by name from any nondisclosure relief.

The waiting period

Section 411.074 sets a waiting period that has to run before the petition can be filed, measured from the completion of the sentence.² The length depends on the offense, and the petition is premature if it is filed before the period has run.

A clean record during the waiting period

A person who is convicted of or placed on deferred adjudication for any other offense, other than a fine-only traffic offense, during the waiting period is barred from this relief under Section 411.074.² The same section carries a long disqualifying-offense list, including family violence, kidnapping, and certain sexual offenses, that bars nondisclosure outright regardless of the wait.²

Standard nondisclosure reaches the working adult with a single qualifying misdemeanor conviction in the past, sentence completed, who has stayed out of trouble since.¹ These are people for whom the conviction is genuinely behind them but who keep running into it on a background screen for a job, a lease, a professional license, or a school program. The remedy exists precisely so that an old, completed misdemeanor does not keep reading back into every application.

It does not reach a person whose offense is on the Section 411.074 disqualifying list, and it does not reach a person who picked up a new conviction or deferred adjudication during the waiting period.² It does not reach a case that ended in deferred adjudication, which runs on the separate nondisclosure pathways for deferred dispositions, and it does not reach a record eligible for the stronger remedy of expunction. Sorting which category a record falls into is the first question, and it is answered from the judgment and the certified criminal history, not from memory.

A granted order of nondisclosure shields the record from the people most likely to run a background check. Once it is entered, the commercial vendors that resell criminal history are prohibited from disclosing the sealed entry, and a private employer or landlord running an ordinary background check will not see it. In many cases the person may lawfully decline to disclose the sealed matter on an application.¹

The limit is built into the remedy. Nondisclosure seals the record; it does not destroy it. Law enforcement agencies and the criminal-justice, public-safety, and licensing entities that the statute lists at Section 411.0765 retain access through a fingerprint-based check, so a person applying for certain licenses or sensitive positions may still have the record considered. That access list is the trade-off Texas built into the statute, and it is the main reason to confirm, before filing, whether nondisclosure or the stronger expunction remedy is the right tool.

A standard nondisclosure turns on two documents above all: the judgment, which shows the offense and the completed sentence, and the certified criminal history, which shows the full record. The judgment sets whether the offense qualifies and when the waiting period began; the criminal history shows whether anything during the waiting period disqualifies the person and which agencies hold the record.

A few steps make the filing cleaner. Gather the cause number, the court that handled the case, and the date the sentence was completed. Order a copy of the certified Department of Public Safety criminal history. Confirm that no other conviction or deferred adjudication landed during the waiting period, because either one is disqualifying under Section 411.074.² Do not assume eligibility from the passage of time alone; the disqualifying-offense list bars some misdemeanors outright no matter how long ago they happened.²

This is general information about how orders of nondisclosure work in Texas. It is not legal advice about any specific record, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

A petition for nondisclosure is filed in the trial court that handled the original case, not in a separate civil court. It follows a set order, and knowing that order makes the process easier to read.

Confirming eligibility

The first step is reading the judgment and the certified criminal history against Section 411.0735 and the Section 411.074 disqualifying-offense list and waiting periods, to confirm the offense qualifies and the wait has run.¹²

Drafting the petition

The petition is drafted to track Section 411.0735, with the waiting-period calculation on the face of the document so the prosecutor can verify it without working it out independently.¹

Filing in the trial court

The petition is filed in the court that handled the original case, which for a Bexar County misdemeanor is the assigned county court at law that has jurisdiction over Class A and B misdemeanors, with filings handled through the Cadena-Reeves Justice Center on Dolorosa Street.³⁴

Notice and the hearing

The prosecuting attorney and every agency holding the record are served, and the prosecutor has the chance to contest. The court sets a hearing where one is required; many uncontested petitions are decided on the papers.

The order and follow-through

On a qualifying record the court signs the order of nondisclosure, and it is sent to the Department of Public Safety, which is the state repository for criminal history record information, and to the other agencies holding the record so the entry is sealed.⁵ The Department of Public Safety confirmation is gathered as proof the record is sealed.

Nondisclosure timing is about when a record becomes eligible, set by the waiting period and the requirement of a clean record during it.

Nondisclosure work is eligibility work first and drafting work second, because Section 411.074 carries a long disqualifying-offense list and a petition filed on a barred offense is denied as a matter of law.² Forrest Good PLLC begins every standard nondisclosure matter with a written eligibility memo: the original judgment, the discharge order where one applies, the full Department of Public Safety criminal history, and the Section 411.074 grid all sit on the same page, so both the qualifying-offense question and the clean-record-during-the-wait question are answered before anything is filed.²

Once eligibility is confirmed, the petition is drafted to track Section 411.0735 precisely, with the waiting-period calculation on the face of the document so the prosecutor can see it without redoing it.¹ The petition is filed in the trial court that handled the original case, and service goes out to the prosecuting attorney and every agency holding the record. After the order issues, the Department of Public Safety confirmation is filed in the matter so the client has documentary proof that the record has been sealed.⁵

The hour estimate

Forrest Good PLLC estimates this matter at 5 to 9 hours of attorney time, billed at $250 per hour. Records-relief work is front-loaded into eligibility analysis and petition drafting; the lower end reflects a clean single-offense misdemeanor with a straightforward waiting period, and the upper end reflects a close Section 411.074 disqualifying-offense analysis, a multi-agency record, or a written contest from the prosecutor's office.² The pricing methodology explains how the eligibility analysis, the agency count, and the procedural posture drive the estimate.

The flat fee and what it covers

The starting flat fee is $1,500. It covers the eligibility memo run against the judgment and the Section 411.074 disqualifying-offense list, pulling the certified court file and the Department of Public Safety criminal history, drafting the petition under Section 411.0735 with the waiting-period analysis on its face, filing in the trial court that handled the original case, serving the prosecuting attorney and every agency holding the record, appearing at the nondisclosure hearing where the court sets one, preparing the proposed order for the judge's signature, and following up with each agency after entry to confirm the record was sealed and the index updated.¹ The fee shown here is honored while this page is published, consistent with Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 7.02(d).⁶

Any work outside the scoped fee is billed at $250 per hour and is disclosed in the written engagement letter before it begins. The engagement letter is the binding contract for the matter.

The first step is a conversation. The initial 30-minute consultation with Forrest Good PLLC is free and is scheduled through the office's Google Booking page. It is the time to read the judgment, confirm the offense qualifies under Section 411.0735, and check the waiting period and the clean-record requirement against Section 411.074 before anything is filed.¹² Bringing the judgment and a copy of the criminal history makes the half hour far more useful.

No attorney-client relationship is formed until a written engagement letter is signed; the consultation itself carries no obligation.

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