Enforcing Colorado divorce and custody orders: the right tool, in order.

Pull the Family Support Registry history, then make sure an income assignment is in place if your ex has an employer; it needs no hearing. File a verified entry of support judgment for the unpaid months, record the transcript as a lien, and decide whether the county Child Support Services office should run its administrative tools, such as license suspension and tax intercepts, alongside you. Contempt comes after those, or instead of them when your ex is self-employed, paid in cash or hiding income. Every unpaid installment is already a judgment, so you are not waiting for a court to say you are owed.

Yes. By statute each installment becomes a final money judgment on the day it is due and not paid, without further action by the court. To enforce it with liens, garnishment or execution, the parent owed the money files a verified entry of support judgment in the existing case, stating the period and the total. There is no filing fee and no fourteen-day wait before executing. The filing also revives the installments it covers, which matters because each one can be enforced for twenty years from its due date.

Since July 1, 2021, ten percent a year, which the parent owed may compound annually; before that date the rate was twelve percent, which could be compounded monthly. The parent owed the money may waive interest, and since 2021 the paying parent can ask the court to disallow some or all of it for good cause and to set a repayment period. Unpaid maintenance and other money judgments in a decree accrue at eight percent, compounded annually. Some of the Judicial Branch’s self-help materials still show outdated rates; the statute controls.

Yes, through contempt, but jail is not automatic and it is not the usual first step. Remedial contempt can jail a person only until they do what the court finds they have the present ability to do, and the order must say how to get out. Punitive contempt can impose a fixed sentence after proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the refusal was willful, and a sentence over six months requires the right to a jury. Willful nonsupport is also a felony, but that case belongs to the district attorney, not to the other parent.

File a verified motion under the parenting-time enforcement statute. Within thirty-five days the court must deny it, set a hearing or send the parents to mediation. If it finds a violation, it can order make-up time of the same type and duration, a bond, parenting classes or counseling at the violating parent’s expense, a civil fine of up to $100 per incident, a modification hearing, or contempt with a fine or jail. It must also order the violating parent to pay your attorney fees and costs.

No. The parenting-time statute forbids conditioning child support on parenting time, and the support enforcement statute says the same from the other direction. Every payment you withhold becomes a judgment with interest and hands the other parent a contempt motion. The rule runs both ways: a parent who is owed support cannot withhold the children to force payment. Each violation has its own remedy, and self-help costs you the credibility you need to use yours.

Usually not. Rule 70 of the civil rules lets the court direct the clerk to sign a deed, title or other document when a party refuses to do an act the order requires, and the Judicial Branch’s instructions note that a document the clerk signs is as valid as if the other party had signed it. The forms are JDF 1814 and JDF 1815. Contempt remains available, and the court can issue a citation too, but the clerk’s signature gets you the title without the delay of a contempt case.

It depends on the tool. An income assignment goes to the employer without a hearing; an objection must be filed within fourteen days and is heard within forty-two. A verified entry of support judgment can be executed on at once. A parenting-time motion gets the court’s first action within thirty-five days. Contempt is slower: the citation must be personally served at least twenty-one days before the first appearance, some courts hold an advisement first, and the hearing follows. The county’s license and credit tools run on their own thirty-day notice periods.

Often the other side. The parenting-time statute requires the court to order a parent who failed to provide or exercise court-ordered time to pay the other parent’s fees and costs. In remedial contempt the court may award fees as part of the sanction, though not for a one-time violation that can no longer be purged. The general family-law fee statute lets the court shift fees based on the parties’ relative finances, before or after the decree, and the prevailing party at an income-assignment objection hearing may recover fees.

Yes. A custody order from another state is registered and enforced here under the interstate custody act, which requires Colorado courts to recognize and enforce it, provides an expedited procedure, and awards fees to the prevailing party unless that would be clearly inappropriate. A support order is registered under the interstate support act, and an income-withholding order from another state can be sent directly to a Colorado employer without registering at all. Interest on the arrears is computed under the law of the state that issued the order.

The decree and every later order on the subject; the Family Support Registry payment history or your own record of payments; any agreement you and the other parent made outside court, and whether a court ever entered it; and a calendar of the parenting time actually exercised or denied, with the messages that go with it. For money, whatever you know about the other parent’s employer, bank, real estate and business. For a deed or a retirement account, the document the order required and the correspondence about it.