The ten-day notice rule
A person filing a motion for expungement "shall give notice of the hearing date set by the court to the department of the attorney general and the police department that originally brought the charge against the person at least ten (10) days prior to that date."
Notice the order. The court sets the date first, and the ten days count back from it. So you cannot send notice until you have a date, and you do not choose the date.
This is also the step self-filed motions most often fail on. Ten days is not hard. The problem is that the notice has to reach two places, and one of them is a police department, not a court.
No deadline for the court
The expungement law sets no deadline for the court to hear the motion, none for the Attorney General to respond, and none for the order to issue after the hearing. So the honest answer to "how long will this take" is that it depends on the court's calendar where your case was decided, not on any rule.
Anyone who quotes you a firm number of weeks is describing their own experience, not the law. That experience is worth something, but it is not a deadline and it is not a promise.
Before you file: the part you control
Two things come before the motion, and you can move both.
Reading your own file on the Judiciary's public portal takes about ten minutes. Getting your BCI record takes a trip to Cranston, or a mail request; for mail, the Attorney General asks you to allow 14 days.
If you still owe money on the case, it has to be paid, or reduced or waived by the court, before the court can grant the motion — and that can take longer than the motion itself. The cost page covers it.
Records that clear without a motion
Not everything needs a motion, and those paths have real timetables.
A District Court Rule 48(a) dismissal on or after January 1, 2023 is sealed automatically, "not less than ten (10) days and not more than twenty (20) days after the dismissal."
A Traffic Tribunal violation clears by operation of law three years after adjudication — five years for a refusal — and after any mandatory state or federal record-retention period has expired.
A completed filing clears itself at the end of the filing period. A domestic violence filing is the exception: it clears three years after the filing, as long as you are not charged with another domestic violence crime in that time — or, if you are, you are acquitted or the complaint is dismissed.
If one of those is your record, it has probably already happened.
How long you must wait before filing
"How long does it take" can mean two things. How long the paperwork takes is this page. How long you must wait before you may file at all is set by law and depends on your record — five years, ten, fifteen, one, or none.
The eligibility checker answers that second question and tells you whether your wait has already run.
The law behind this page
- Ten days' notice of the hearing date to the Attorney General and the police department that brought the charge: R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-1.3-3(a).
- No outstanding court-imposed or court-related amounts, unless reduced or waived by the court: § 12-1.3-3(b)(1)(i).
- Automatic sealing of a District Court Rule 48(a) dismissal on or after January 1, 2023, 10 to 20 days after the dismissal: § 12-1-12.1(a)(1).
- Traffic Tribunal violations expunged by operation of law: § 31-41.1-10; refusals: § 31-27-2.1.
- Filings, including domestic violence filings: § 12-10-12 and § 12-1-12.1.
- Source: R.I. Attorney General, Bureau of Criminal Identification — walk-in only in Cranston; allow 14 days by mail.
