Protection orders in Colorado: how they are granted, what they do, and how to defend against one.

Two kinds of orders

Civil and criminal — different courts, different rules.

A civil protection order is one you ask for yourself, under Title 13 of the Colorado statutes, in county court or inside your divorce case. A criminal mandatory protection order (C.R.S. § 18-1-1001) is entered automatically in every criminal case at the defendant’s first appearance, whether or not anyone asks; in a domestic-violence case it typically bars all contact and can bar a return to the home, and it lasts until the case is over — dismissal, acquittal, or the end of the sentence. The two often exist at the same time, and they are changed in different ways.

Who can get one, and for what

The five grounds.

A civil protection order can be issued for five purposes (C.R.S. § 13-14-104.5(1)): to prevent assaults and threatened bodily harm; to prevent domestic abuse; to prevent emotional abuse of the elderly or an at-risk adult; to prevent sexual violence; and to prevent stalking. “Domestic abuse” is defined broadly — any act, attempted act, or threatened act of violence, stalking, harassment, or coercion between intimate partners, relatives, or people who live together, including acts against a child or an animal intended to coerce, control, punish, intimidate, or exact revenge. The petitioner does not have to have reported anything to the police, and the court may not deny an order because of the time that passed between the incident and the filing.

Step one: the temporary order

Same day, without the other side.

The petitioner files a verified complaint — the court’s form is JDF 402, signed under penalty of perjury, and it must describe the most recent incident, the most serious incident, and any prior incidents — and a judge or magistrate reads it that day. If there are children, an affidavit about them (JDF 404) goes with it. The filing fee is about $95 and is waived for petitioners alleging domestic violence, stalking, or sexual violence. In a pending divorce or custody case the request can be made in that case to the district court; otherwise it goes to county court. In Denver the civil protection-order desk is at the City and County Building, 1437 Bannock Street, Room 159, and takes filings from 7:30 to 9:00 in the morning; in Arapahoe and Douglas the county courts sit in the same justice centers as the divorce courts.

The standard changed on January 1, 2025. A temporary order may issue if the judge finds “a risk or threat of physical harm or the threat of psychological or emotional harm” to the person seeking protection — not, as most websites still say, “imminent danger.” The other side is not there. The order takes effect when the respondent is served with it, and the same paper orders the respondent to appear and show cause why the order should not be made permanent.

What the order can include

Far more than distance.

Under C.R.S. § 13-14-105 the order can prohibit threatening, molesting, injuring, or contacting the protected person or the children; exclude the restrained party from the family home, or from the other party’s home, on a showing that physical or emotional harm would otherwise result; keep the restrained party away from the protected person’s workplace or school; protect animals and decide who keeps them; and, for up to a year, bar either party from cancelling mortgage, rent, insurance, or utility payments or from transferring, encumbering, or concealing property. It can also award temporary care and control of the children for up to one year, including a parenting-time schedule, supervised parenting time, and interim decision-making related to preventing abuse — which is why a protection order so often becomes the opening move of a custody case.

Step two: the hearing within fourteen days

Two findings, more likely than not.

The return date must be set no more than fourteen days after the temporary order issues. At the hearing the petitioner must prove two things by a preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not (C.R.S. § 13-14-106): that the respondent committed acts constituting grounds for an order, and that unless restrained the respondent will continue to commit those acts or acts designed to intimidate or retaliate. (In sexual-violence cases the second finding is instead that a risk or threat of harm exists.) If both are found, the court makes the order permanent, or enters a permanent order with different terms. If the respondent was served and does not appear, a permanent order enters by default, without further evidence.

There are other outcomes. The parties can agree to continue the temporary order and the hearing for up to a year, or in a divorce case until the final decree, which is often the right resolution when both sides want distance without a permanent finding. Each side may ask for one continuance of up to fourteen days for good cause. And the court can enter a narrower order — no harassment, contact limited to a co-parenting app about the children — which is frequently the negotiated result in a case with children.

Firearms

Twenty-four hours.

When the court finds that the order involves an act of domestic violence with the threat or use of physical force, the restrained person must give up all firearms and ammunition (C.R.S. § 13-14-105.5): within twenty-four hours of being served in court, or forty-eight hours if served elsewhere, by selling or transferring them to a licensed dealer, storing them with a law-enforcement agency, or transferring them to a private person who may lawfully possess them and passes a background check — never to someone in the same household. Within seven business days the restrained person must file a sworn declaration (JDF 687) listing what was relinquished and where. Missing either deadline is itself a violation of the order and results in an arrest warrant. Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)) independently bars possession while a qualifying order is in effect.

Protection orders and your custody case

The order is temporary. The record is not.

The care-and-control provisions of a protection order are a stopgap — up to a year — and the divorce or custody court takes over the parenting decisions. But what happens in the protection-order case follows you there. A finding of domestic violence or child abuse carries a specific consequence under C.R.S. § 14-10-124(1.5)(c), rewritten in May 2026: joint decision-making is not in the child’s best interests over the other parent’s objection unless the court makes specific findings that it can occur without coercion, intimidation, retaliation, or risk of harm, and the court can impose safety conditions on parenting time — supervision, protected exchanges, no overnights. Two months out of the house also becomes the status quo the temporary-orders magistrate sees. The practical work in a case with children is keeping co-parenting communication lawful: a carve-out in the civil order for a parenting app, and, where a criminal order exists, a request to the criminal court to modify it for parenting contact — which it must set for hearing in a domestic-violence case. More on the custody side: False Allegations and Supervised Parenting Time.

If you have been served

How I defend a false or exaggerated petition.

Comply completely, starting now. Do not reply if the petitioner texts you first — the protected person’s consent is not a defense, and the contact is a crime with mandatory arrest. Do not go to the house for your things; I will arrange a civil standby. Do not send messages through the children or friends.

Do not miss the hearing. If you were served and do not appear, the order becomes permanent by default, and you cannot ask to change it for two years. Fourteen days is the whole window.

Attack both elements. The petitioner has to prove the acts happened and that they would continue without an order. The second element is where many petitions fail: a single argument months ago, followed by ordinary co-parenting, does not show a likelihood of continuing. The first element fails when the evidence contradicts the story — the complete message thread rather than the screenshot, location and calendar data, medical records or their absence, the witnesses who were actually there, and the petitioner’s own words in the weeks before the filing. A petition that arrives the week of a custody motion or the day after a settlement proposal was refused has a timeline, and the timeline is evidence.

Consider a narrower agreed order. In some cases the right result is an agreed order without findings or admissions — no harassment, contact limited to a parenting app — that gives the petitioner distance and gives you no domestic-violence finding in the custody case and no firearms relinquishment. I negotiate for that outcome when the facts make a contested hearing a coin flip.

Know the limits. If a criminal case is pending, testifying at the civil hearing can hand the prosecutor your statement, and the decision whether to testify is made with your criminal-defense lawyer. Fees against a petitioner are hard to get — the statute shields petitioners except for a claim that is substantially frivolous, groundless, or vexatious — so the goal is winning the hearing, not punishing the filer. And the stakes are larger than the order itself: a permanent order appears in background checks and affects housing, employment, licensing, and firearms.

What to bring to the hearing

For either side.

• The temporary order and proof of service.
• A dated timeline of every incident and every contact since service.
• Complete message threads — texts, email, social media, call logs — exported with dates and phone numbers visible, not cropped screenshots.
• Photographs of injuries or damage, with dates, and the medical records if any.
• Police reports and case numbers, and the names of responding officers.
• Witnesses who saw the events, subpoenaed through the clerk if they will not come voluntarily.
• Anything that shows motive or timing: custody filings, settlement letters, prior friendly messages from the other side.
• For a respondent: proof of no contact since service, and evidence of where you were when the alleged acts happened.
• Three copies of every exhibit — one for the judge, one for the other side, one for you.

Violating an order

A crime, whoever started the conversation.

Violating a protection order (C.R.S. § 18-6-803.5) means contacting, harassing, or coming within the prohibited distance of the protected person, entering the premises, or keeping firearms or failing to file the relinquishment declaration. It is a class 2 misdemeanor — up to 120 days and $750 — and a class 1 misdemeanor, up to 364 days and $1,000, when the parties were in an intimate relationship, the order was based on stalking, the order is a criminal mandatory order, or there is a prior violation. Arrest is mandatory when an officer has probable cause, a violation while on bond triggers a motion to revoke it, and the protected person can also pursue contempt. The protected person cannot consent to a violation.

Changing or ending an order

The two-year rule.

The protected person may ask to modify or dismiss the order at any time (C.R.S. § 13-14-108). The restrained person may not file for two years after the permanent order — and two years after each motion that is denied — and must first obtain a fingerprint-based criminal-history check within ninety days of filing, at his own cost. The court weighs compliance with the order, completion of treatment, the time that has passed, the date of the last threat or abuse, any later convictions or other orders, the parties’ circumstances — shared children, proximity of homes, schools, and workplaces — and whether the protected person’s safety still depends on the order. A conviction for any later offense against the protected person makes the order permanent for good unless the protected person asks to end it. The forms are JDF 397 and 410.

Questions people ask

The short answers.

Related: Emergency Orders  ·  False Allegations  ·  Supervised Parenting Time  ·  Temporary Orders  ·  Parental Responsibilities