Legal Question in Criminal Law in Florida

A withholding of adjudication is not a conviction. The disposition will remain on your wife's record but without a formal conviction. It the case was handled under the domestic violence battery statutes, she will be unable to seal the record. Read the following links for more information:

http://www.leifertlaw.com/lawyer-attorney-1169492.html

http://www.leifertlaw.com/lawyer-attorney-1169499.html

In the old days, when you weren't sent to jail, the judge "withheld adjudication." Job applications were supposed to say, "Have you ever been convicted?" (That's how the statute reads.) If you hadn't been to jail, which is all anyone apparently cared about, you could say "no." These days, job applications ask things like, "Have you ever been arrested, convicted, had adjudication withheld, etc.," and the answer has to be "yes." She should look into having her record sealed, in which case she could lawfully deny the arrest, the withholding of adjudication, and everything else on apartment applications and almost all job applications. However, as Mr. Leifert has suggested, based on how you described the charged, she may not qualify to have the record sealed.