Emergency orders: what a Colorado family court will do fast, and what it will not.

Is it an emergency?

What the court treats as one.

Judges grant emergency relief for harm that is recent, specific, and provable, and deny it for everything else. The court will act on a child exposed to violence, intoxication, or an unsafe person in the last days or weeks; a credible threat to take the children out of state; a parent who cannot safely care for the children because of a relapse or a psychiatric crisis; money being moved, borrowed against, or hidden in amounts that would be hard to recover; and a spouse whose presence in the home is causing physical or emotional harm. It will not act on incidents from years ago, on a parent you consider a poor one, on ordinary disagreements about bedtime or school, or on a fear you cannot document. The one sentence I repeat to every client: the court will be looking for tangible proof, and proving — or refuting — the immediacy of the harm is the whole case.

The four tools

And which one fits.

The motion to restrict parenting time

Fourteen days, supervised in the meantime.

A motion under C.R.S. § 14-10-129(4) alleges that the child is in imminent physical or emotional danger because of the other parent’s parenting time or contact. From the moment it is filed, the other parent’s time is limited to contact supervised by an unrelated third party the court finds suitable or by a licensed mental-health professional — not stopped, as some websites say, but supervised. The court must hear and rule on the motion within fourteen days. At the hearing the moving parent has to prove the danger with evidence: what happened, when, who saw it, and why it is likely to happen again. The outcomes range from denial, to a period of supervised time, to conditions such as sobriety monitoring or treatment, to an evaluation by a CFI or PRE. Colorado attached a price to misuse: if the court finds the motion was substantially frivolous, groundless, or vexatious, the parent who filed it pays the other side’s attorney fees.

Freezing money

You already have an injunction. Sometimes you need more.

Every Colorado divorce carries an automatic temporary injunction (C.R.S. § 14-10-107(4)(b)) from the moment the petition is filed, binding the filer immediately and the other spouse on service: no transferring, encumbering, concealing, or disposing of marital property outside the ordinary course of business or the necessities of life, with a duty to account for extraordinary expenditures; no taking the children out of state without consent or an order; no cancelling or changing health, home, auto, or life insurance without fourteen days’ notice and consent; and no disturbing the other spouse’s peace. Officers can enforce the last one on the spot.

When the injunction is not enough — a transfer already in motion, an account overseas, a business distribution about to be paid — I ask for a temporary restraining order under Rule 65 together with orders under C.R.S. § 14-10-108(2) restraining specific transfers. A restraining order can issue without notice to the other side only on specific sworn facts showing immediate and irreparable injury before the other side can be heard; it lasts no more than fourteen days, and the court sets a hearing as soon as possible on whether to extend it. In practice the order is only as good as the notice that goes with it: I send it to the bank, the brokerage, the company’s controller, and the title company the same day.

Getting the house

Exclusive use and possession.

Colorado does not require anyone to move out when a divorce is filed. A court can exclude a spouse from the family home in two ways: through a protection order, on a showing that physical or emotional harm would otherwise result, or through temporary orders under C.R.S. § 14-10-108(2)(c) on the same showing. The protection-order route is faster and does not require an incident to be violent; the temporary-orders route is the right one when the problem is a household that has become intolerable rather than dangerous. Either way the court looks at the children’s routine, who can realistically move, and the record of what has been happening in the house — and the spouse who stays usually keeps the children’s routine with them, which matters at the next hearing.

How fast is fast

In the Denver-area courts.

A temporary protection order can be in hand the same morning. A temporary restraining order on money can issue the same day if the affidavit supports it. A motion to restrict must be heard within fourteen days, and the divorce courts keep that clock. Everything else — support, the house on a non-emergency basis, a first parenting schedule — comes through temporary orders, which in my experience the south-metro magistrates hear two to four months after filing, usually after mediation. A motion can ask the court to set a matter forthwith, and courts do it when the papers show why; the papers are the difference.

If an emergency motion has been filed against you

Comply, then fight.

Follow the order exactly, including the supervision, while I get the hearing set. Read the motion for the word that matters — imminent — and gather the evidence that answers it: the timeline of the weeks before the filing, the complete message threads, the people who were there, and the record of ordinary, uneventful parenting that continued right up to the day the motion appeared. Supervised time in the meantime is a bridge, not a verdict; use it well, because the supervisor’s notes become evidence too. And remember the fee provision: a motion filed as leverage rather than out of fear costs the parent who filed it. The full playbook is on the False Allegations page.

What to bring

The court wants proof, not adjectives.

• A dated timeline of the incidents, with the most recent first.
• Photographs, video, and voicemails, with dates.
• Complete text and email threads, exported rather than screenshotted.
• Police reports and case numbers; medical, school, or daycare records.
• Names and contact details of witnesses.
• For money: account statements, screenshots of balances with dates, transfer confirmations, loan applications, and the business’s recent bank activity.
• The existing parenting plan, decree, or orders, if any.

After the emergency

Turning fast relief into a durable order.

Emergency orders are short-lived by design. What follows is the ordinary path — temporary orders, a CFI or PRE where the parenting dispute warrants it, treatment or testing conditions where substance use was the issue, and, when domestic violence is found, the safety conditions the custody statute now provides for. The work in the weeks after an emergency is converting a two-week order into a parenting plan and a financial structure that will hold, which is where the case is actually won: Temporary Orders.

Questions people ask

The short answers.

Related: Protection Orders  ·  Temporary Orders  ·  False Allegations  ·  Hidden Assets  ·  Parenting Time