Judge orders Taylor Frankie Paul, Dakota Mortensen to stay apart for three years

In a Salt Lake City courtroom, the reality-TV noise gave way to a simpler command: Taylor Frankie Paul and Dakota Mortensen “need to stay away from each other.” On April 30, 2026, Commissioner Russell Minas ordered mutual protective orders that require both to remain 100 feet apart for three years, a ruling that turned a volatile public feud into a court-ordered separation.

The hearing in Third District Court also put their 2-year-old son, Ever, at the center of the case. Minas said he was still weighing custody and parenting-time issues and did not make a final parenting-time decision that day. Paul had already been granted up to eight hours of supervised parenting time per week at an April 7 virtual hearing, and the court set a review hearing for early June, with a recommendation on changes due by May 11.

What the court weighed was not just the latest headlines, but a longer record of conflict. Police in Draper and West Jordan opened domestic violence investigations involving the former couple in February 2026. Court filings and hearing testimony also referenced a February 2023 incident and a 2023 police case in Herriman. Minas said the evidence suggested the violence went both ways and that neither party was acting in self-defense. He described Paul as more reactive and Mortensen as more calculating, and said the situation was “toxic.”

That legal record has run alongside a far louder public story. A 2023 video resurfaced in March 2026 showing Paul appearing to throw chairs, kick and push Mortensen while a child was present, and that release helped lead ABC to cancel the already taped season of The Bachelorette that was set to feature Paul. The online reaction turned the dispute into a reality-TV spectacle, but the court hearing focused on protective orders, custody and the child’s safety.

The criminal side of the case moved differently. Salt Lake County prosecutors declined to file charges against Paul on April 14, 2026. Prosecutors said multiple attorneys reviewed the matter because of her high profile, and that some allegations fell outside Utah’s two-year misdemeanor statute of limitations while more recent conduct did not rise to the level of criminal offenses.

Paul, one of the central figures in Utah’s MomTok influencer circle and a star of Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, had appeared in public court with Mortensen only after the domestic violence investigations became public. In a phone interview, she said, “I will have my truth.” Minas’ ruling, though, was built on a narrower question than social media had made of the feud: whether two parents locked in mutual allegations could safely remain in each other’s orbit. His answer was no.