A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has granted Brittany Cartwright a temporary domestic violence restraining order against her estranged husband and Vanderpump Rules co-star Jax Taylor, ordering him to stay 100 yards away from her after she detailed years of alleged physical, emotional and financial abuse. Cartwright, 37, filed the request in L.A. Superior Court on August 27, alleging that Taylor, 47, physically attacked her, stalked her and at one point threatened to gut her like a fish.
The Valley star's declaration, first detailed by Reality Blurb, outlines an alleged pattern of abuse stretching back roughly ten years. Cartwright alleged that Taylor committed physical violence against her and that she suffered injuries from the alleged attacks, according to the outlet's report. She also accused him of stalking her, gaslighting her and subjecting her to what she described as coercive control, including accessing her iPhone, text messages and Instagram account without her approval and deleting messages from her phone.
Among the specific allegations included in her filing, Cartwright claimed Taylor called her a string of degrading names — including “bitch,” “cunt,” “fat ass bitch,” “fatty,” “broke ass bitch” and “whore” — both privately and in public in front of their five-year-old son, Cruz Cauchi. She also alleged he threw furniture, broke three of her iPhones and one of her iPads, and destroyed other property inside the couple's home, per the same report.
Financial Pressure and a Missing Wedding Ring
Cartwright further alleged that Taylor used spousal support and child support payments to pressure and intimidate her, and told her that she lived on his dime and would eventually have to pay him for child and spousal support herself. She also claimed he took her $70,000 wedding ring from their house and has refused to return it, according to the filing described by Reality Blurb.
The custody fight over Cruz has also intensified. Cartwright requested sole custody of their son, but the court turned down that request pending a formal hearing. She additionally alleged that Taylor posted private messages about Cruz on OurFamilyWizard, a co-parenting platform built specifically to centralize scheduling, expenses and messaging into tamper-proof, court-admissible records meant to reduce conflict in high-stakes custody cases, according to OurFamilyWizard.
California law gives real teeth to allegations like these. Family Code Section 6320, amended under Senate Bill 1141 in 2021, explicitly recognizes coercive control — a pattern of behavior that unreasonably interferes with a person's free will through financial control, isolation or digital surveillance — as its own basis for a domestic violence restraining order, without requiring proof of physical injury, according to The Geller Firm.
What Happens Before the Next Hearing
The temporary order triggers immediate and automatic consequences under state law. A granted domestic violence restraining order requires the restrained party to surrender all guns and ammunition within 24 to 48 hours, and the order is entered into the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System for statewide enforcement, per Family Law Matters, as detailed by Settlement Insight.
The order will remain in place only as a temporary measure. Under California Family Code procedures, these ex parte orders typically stay in effect until a formal evidentiary hearing — generally scheduled within 21 days — where both Cartwright and Taylor can present testimony before a judge decides whether to issue a permanent protective order that could last up to five years, according to the same Settlement Insight report. Taylor has not yet responded publicly to the restraining order or to Cartwright's allegations, per Reality Blurb's reporting.
A Two-Year Legal Battle Predates the Filing
Cartwright filed for divorce from Taylor on August 27, 2024, in Los Angeles County Superior Court after five years of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences and listing their separation date as January 24, 2024, according to the Los Angeles Times. In the months before that filing, Taylor spent 30 days in an intensive inpatient mental health treatment facility and later announced he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, Us Weekly reported at the time.
Legal friction between the exes has run through the divorce from early on. In October 2024, Taylor refiled his response to Cartwright's divorce petition with help from celebrity family law attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan, after making administrative errors while representing himself — including erroneously claiming the two were never legally married, as reported by The Independent. Taylor also publicly acknowledged, in a March 2025 podcast interview, that he had battled a 20-year cocaine addiction before committing to sobriety.
Just weeks before Cartwright sought the restraining order, tensions between the two camps escalated further. In late July, Kaplan publicly accused Cartwright of stalling the divorce by arriving at a settlement conference without required financial records — a claim Cartwright's camp rejected as simply not true, countering that delays stemmed from financial disputes and Taylor's rehab stays, according to Reality Tea.
The dispute has played out alongside the couple's shared television careers. The Valley, the Bravo spinoff of Vanderpump Rules following former Los Angeles restaurant employees into suburban San Fernando Valley family life, premiered in March 2024 and continued into its third season this year. How the network handles Taylor's future on the show, along with the outcome of the custody dispute over Cruz and whether the court grants a longer-term protective order, remain open questions ahead of the next hearing.
