How Long Does a Texas DWI Stay on Your Record?

A Texas DWI conviction doesn’t fall off your record after seven years, or ten, or ever. There’s no automatic purge in Texas law. Two things clear a DWI, and only two: an expunction, which requires that you were never convicted and never placed on community supervision, and an order of nondisclosure, which hides the conviction from the public but leaves it in place.

Most people asking this question are still fighting the case or were just arrested. That’s the right time to ask, because what your record looks like in five years gets decided by how this case ends, not by anything you file afterward. Call (713) 664-4000 and we’ll tell you which of these doors your case can still reach.

Does a DWI go away after seven years?

No. The seven-year number comes from federal credit reporting law, not Texas criminal law, and it doesn’t do what people think it does.

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(2) stops a background check company from reporting an arrest that’s more than seven years old. Subsection (a)(5) extends that limit to other adverse information and then carves out one category by name: “records of convictions of crimes.” Convictions are reportable forever. And under § 1681c(b)(3), even the seven-year limit on arrests disappears when the job pays $75,000 a year or more.

So a dismissed DWI arrest may stop showing up on a routine commercial background check after seven years. A conviction never will. And none of that touches the government’s own copy, which is what a licensing board, a prosecutor, or a judge actually looks at.

Your criminal record and your driving record are different files

When a client says “my record,” they usually mean one of two things that behave nothing alike.

The criminal history sits with DPS and is mirrored in the county’s court records. It shows the arrest, the charge, and how the case ended. Nothing in Texas law makes an entry age out of it.

The driving record is separate. Under Transportation Code § 521.042, DPS records the abstract of every conviction a court sends over. But § 521.046 limits what DPS will sell a third party on a record request to moving violations and collisions from the three years preceding the request. That three-year window is why someone pulls their driving record, sees a clean sheet, and decides the DWI is gone. It isn’t. The criminal history doesn’t work on a rolling window.

Expunction is only available if you were never convicted

An expunction destroys the records. Every agency holding them has to surrender or wipe them, and afterward you can legally deny the arrest happened. It’s the strongest relief Texas offers and the hardest to get on a DWI.

Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 55A.051 sets the gate. You qualify only if the charge never became a final conviction, is no longer pending, and there was no court-ordered community supervision for the offense other than for a Class C misdemeanor. That last clause ends the conversation for a lot of people. DWI probation is community supervision. So is DWI deferred adjudication. Either one closes the expunction door for good, even though most people don’t think of deferred as a conviction.

Where expunction does apply, the rules are specific. If the State never filed charges, Art. 55A.052 entitles you to expunction once one year has passed from an arrest for a Class A or B misdemeanor, or three years from a felony arrest, and immediately if the prosecutor certifies the records aren’t needed for any investigation. A first DWI is a Class B, so the ordinary wait on an uncharged DWI arrest is a year.

If charges were filed and then dismissed, Art. 55A.053 is much narrower than people expect. The court has to find the case was dismissed because you completed a veterans treatment court program, a mental health court program, or a pretrial intervention program, or because the charging instrument was void, or because it was filed on mistake, false information, or something else showing there was no probable cause to believe you committed the offense at the time of dismissal. A plain negotiated dismissal doesn’t satisfy that list. It can still get there through Art. 55A.101(a)(2), which lets the court expunge before trial when the prosecutor’s office recommends it, filed charge or not. That recommendation is discretionary on both ends, so it’s something to build into the dismissal while the case is open, not something to ask for a year later. Both halves of that surprise people, and it’s why the terms of a dismissal matter as much as getting one.

An acquittal at trial entitles you to expunction under Art. 55A.002. Art. 55A.054 covers an arrest that can no longer be prosecuted because limitations ran out. A pardon works under Arts. 55A.003 and 55A.004.

Our Texas expunction eligibility tool walks the same gates in order, and our Houston DWI expunction lawyer page covers the filing process.

Sealing a DWI conviction under Section 411.0731

If you were convicted and placed on regular probation, expunction is off the table, but sealing may not be. Government Code § 411.0731 is the DWI-specific nondisclosure statute, and four things have to line up.

First, the conviction has to be under Penal Code § 49.04 and not punishable under § 49.04(d), which is the Class A version for an analysis showing 0.15 or more. Convicted of the Class A, you’re barred. If that allegation gets abandoned and you’re convicted of the Class B, you’re not. That’s a concrete reason to fight the 0.15 allegation instead of treating it as a punishment-range detail.

Second, you have to have been placed on community supervision under a provision of Chapter 42A other than Subchapter C, which means regular probation rather than deferred, and you have to finish it without a revocation and pay everything the court ordered.

Third, you can’t have any prior conviction or deferred adjudication for another offense, other than a fine-only traffic offense. Not just a prior DWI. A theft deferred from your twenties counts.

Fourth, the waiting period, which is where most of the advice online goes wrong. Section 411.0731(f) gives you two years after you complete community supervision only if you complied with a condition restricting you to an interlock-equipped vehicle for at least six months. Without that interlock condition, the wait is five years. Anybody quoting two years across the board is reading half the subsection.

One more bar sits in subsection (e): the court can’t grant the order if the prosecutor presents evidence sufficient to show the offense resulted in a motor vehicle collision involving another person, and the statute specifically counts a passenger in your own car. Read how that’s written. The State has to come forward with it, which makes it something to be prepared for rather than a box on the petition.

Section 411.074 applies on top of all of it. You can’t pick up a new conviction or deferred adjudication for anything but a fine-only traffic offense between sentencing and the end of the waiting period, and a family violence finding disqualifies you outright.

Deferred adjudication on a first DWI, and what it costs later

Since September 1, 2019, a judge can give deferred adjudication on a first DWI. Article 42A.102(b)(1)(B) excludes you if you held a commercial driver’s license or commercial learner’s permit at the time of the offense, or if your alcohol concentration was 0.15 or more. Paragraph (C) excludes any case that can be enhanced under § 49.09, so a second DWI isn’t eligible at all.

Finish the deferred and the case is discharged and dismissed under Art. 42A.111. Sealing then runs through § 411.0726, by petition, no earlier than the second anniversary of that discharge. It’s a petition, not an automatic order. The automatic nondisclosure statute, § 411.072, expressly excludes § 49.04 and § 49.06, so a DWI never gets the free version that other misdemeanors get.

And there’s a price. Under Penal Code § 49.09(g), a deferred adjudication for DWI counts as a conviction for enhancement. You can seal it and it still makes the next one a Class A. That trade is worth making in most cases, but make it knowing what you bought.

For enhancement purposes, a Texas DWI lasts forever

Texas used to have a ten-year washout for DWI priors. The Legislature repealed it in 2005, effective September 1 of that year, when subsections (e) and (f) of § 49.09 came out of the code. A 1997 DWI conviction enhances a 2026 DWI exactly the same as one from last year.

Under § 49.09(a), one prior intoxication offense makes the new DWI a Class A misdemeanor with a 30-day minimum term of confinement. Under § 49.09(b), two priors make it a third-degree felony, two to ten years in prison. Section 49.09(d) closes the obvious escape hatch: a conviction on or after September 1, 1994 counts “whether the sentence for the conviction is imposed or probated.” Probation doesn’t make it disappear. Out-of-state convictions count too, under § 49.09(c)(1)(F).

The felony versions, which can’t be sealed at all

“Felony DWI” usually means that third-degree version under § 49.09(b). It can also mean intoxication assault under § 49.07, a third-degree felony, or intoxication manslaughter under § 49.08, a second-degree felony. DWI with a passenger younger than 15 is a state jail felony under § 49.045. And as of September 1, 2025, § 49.04(e) adds one more: a DWI committed in a school crossing zone while the reduced speed limit is in effect is a state jail felony on a first offense, with no prior needed.

None of these can be sealed. Section 411.0731 reaches § 49.04 misdemeanor convictions and nothing else, and there’s no expunction path after a conviction. That asymmetry is the entire argument for spending money on the case now instead of on a petition years from now.

Your license record is a separate fight

Winning an expunction on the criminal case does not automatically clear an ALR suspension. Article 55A.152 says driver’s license suspension records can’t be expunged under Chapter 55A except as provided by Transportation Code § 524.015 or § 724.048. Those two sections rescind the suspension and strip it from your computerized driving record in exactly one situation: an acquittal on the criminal charge arising from the same arrest. A dismissal doesn’t trigger either one.

Which means a case that ends in a dismissal can leave you with a clean criminal history and a suspension still sitting on your driving record where every insurer can see it. The place to prevent that is the ALR hearing, and the request has to reach DPS in Austin within 15 days of the notice of suspension under § 524.031 or § 724.041. Miss it and the suspension goes through by default.

Call us before the record is set

Everything above runs downstream of one thing: how the case ends. An expunction needs an acquittal or a dismissal for the right stated reason. Or a prosecutor willing to recommend one. A two-year nondisclosure instead of a five-year one can turn on whether an interlock condition went into the probation order. Even your basic eligibility can turn on whether the 0.15 allegation stays in the charging instrument.

Those get decided while the case is open, by the lawyer handling it, and they can’t be fixed later. Jay Blass Cohen has defended DWI cases in Harris County since 2009. Call (713) 664-4000 and we’ll tell you what your record can realistically look like when this is over, and what it takes to get there.