Romeo and Juliet Law publishes legal information. It is not a law firm, and nothing on this site is legal advice.
That sentence appears on a lot of websites as a formality. Here it marks a real boundary, and this page explains exactly where the boundary runs, because knowing that makes the site more useful rather than less.
What this site does
It states what a statute says, quotes the operative wording, links the section on the state legislature’s own website, and records the date the section was last read.
It does that for the same four questions in every state: the age of consent, the close-in-age allowance, whether the provision removes the offence or supplies a defence, and what the separate registration statutes require.
That is a defined, checkable job. Every claim carries the citation that supports it, which means a reader can verify any sentence here in under a minute without taking anybody’s word for anything.
What it does not do
It does not apply the law to a set of facts. That is the line, and it is not a matter of caution. It is a matter of what a webpage is capable of.
An article knows the statute. It does not know which of two birthdays controls, whether a summer coaching role counts as a position of authority in that state, what was on a phone, what was said in an interview, whether an image offence is in play, or what the prosecutor in that county does with cases of this kind. Every one of those can move the outcome further than the age gap does.
This site also does not recommend lawyers. No firm pays anything to appear here, so there is no basis for ranking one against another and no attempt is made to.
Why the line matters more here than on most sites
Close-in-age provisions sit inside criminal codes. Reading one wrong does not cost money. It can cost a felony conviction, a prison term and decades on a public register.
And the deciding facts are small. A birthday falling on the wrong side of a date. A coaching role nobody thought about. Which state line the conduct happened on. A clause amended last session that most of the pages you found online have not caught up with.
No general article weighs those. Ours are written to get you to somebody who can.
How to use this site well
- Read the guide for the state where the conduct happened, not where anyone lives. The law that applies is the law of that place.
- Open the statute link. Read the sentence for yourself. A guide is a map; the code is the ground.
- Check the review date at the top. It tells you the last day anyone verified the text against the code.
- Treat registration as its own question. It is decided by a different act from the offence and can land differently.
- Take the guide to a lawyer. Walking into a consultation already knowing the framework turns a confused hour into a productive one.
Currency, and what the review date promises
Legislatures amend statutes without telling anybody outside the building. Appellate courts reinterpret wording that had looked settled for a decade. Registration rules shift on their own schedule, separately from the offence.
Every guide here carries the date its statutory claims were last checked against the primary source. That date is a precise claim about work that was done, and it is the honest measure of how current a page is. Confirm anything you are about to rely on against the official text, which is one click away from every citation on this site.
Nothing sent to us is confidential
The contact form is an ordinary web form. Messages land in a database and an inbox. No legal privilege attaches to them and no duty of confidentiality applies.
Do not send details of an investigation, an accusation or a pending case. Send them to a lawyer, where privilege exists and protects you.
Attorney review
Guides on this site are researched and written from primary sources. They have not been reviewed by a licensed attorney, and this site makes no claim that they have.
If that changes, the reviewer’s name, state and bar admission will be published, and the individual guides they reviewed will say so on the page. No such claim will appear anywhere on this site before it is true.
If you need help right now
Find a criminal defence attorney licensed in the state where the matter arose. Do that before speaking to investigators, and before explaining yourself to anyone.
Two routes if cost is the obstacle. Most state bar associations run a lawyer referral service that will put you in front of somebody for a small fee or none. And the public defender’s office in the relevant county can tell you whether you qualify for appointed counsel, which costs nothing to ask.